A Spring 2017 Kids' Indie Next List pick: "Inspired Recommendations for Kids from Indie Booksellers"
Description
“Tender, comforting, and complex.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Drawn with exquisite precision and quiet dashes of humor.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A lovely, ruminative selection.” —School Library Journal (starred review)
“A blueprint for mindfulness and gratitude for the homes in which we…live.” —The New York Times Book Review
Deborah Freedman’s masterful new picture book is at once an introduction to the pieces of a house, a cozy story to share and explore, and a dreamy meditation on the magic of our homes and our world.
Before there was this house,
there were stones,
and mud,
and a colossal oak tree—
three hugs around
and as high as the blue.
What was your home, once?
This poetically simple, thought-provoking, and gorgeously illustrated book invites readers to think about where things come from and what nature provides.
Reviews
"Deborah Freedman's dreamy "This House, Once"...is not offering us a plan for some future home.... Instead the book is a blueprint for mindfulness and gratitude for the homes in which we already live. With the wooziness that comes from sitting close to a fire, and in a whisper of colors that have the hypnotic allure of bruises, Freedman deconstructs and rebuilds her toasty house...so long as the embers of Freedman's incantation continue to glow, I'm in no rush."
*STARRED REVIEW* "Softly, poetically, an unseen narrator explores a house and what it is made of.... Using pencil (both gray and colored), watercolor, and pastel—all with a supreme delicacy—Freedman builds this house.... The arc emphasizes shelter but also human use of nature, so the feelings of warmth, safety, and coziness hold the faintest tinge of melancholy and loss. Tender, comforting, and complex."
*STARRED REVIEW* "Freedman (Shy) lyrically meditates on the origins of a house.... "What were these all, once?" Freedman’s gentle inquiry is drawn with exquisite precision and quiet dashes of humor, and it will leave children thinking about the way their own houses are an extension of the natural world, with “memories” of the resources used to bring them into existence."
