There’s No Place Like Home

I’ve been thinking a lot about home lately.  What is it exactly?  Is it the same as shelter?  Is it always a physical space?  Who or what needs a home?  Is it a state of mind anyone, anywhere can enjoy?  A dream to realize?  A nightmare to flee from?  This musing typically starts in conversation with friends about the places we live, the homes we have created for ourselves and our families, and if they will suit us as we age.  We try not to take our present comfort for granted when we consider possible next steps.  Yet we agree on certain things that we imagine to be common needs and wants in any new environment:  safety, ease of movement, affordability, and access to a larger caring community. 

At the same time, we can’t ignore the people in our neighborhoods, young and old, who seem to be completely unhoused, or with housing that appears precarious, at best.  What does home mean to them?  Some folks live in nearby parks and vehicles.  I try to stay open, and without judgement, when I meet a parent taking to the open road with their children to create a home on wheels.  When I open the newspaper and see pictures of families running from their communities leveled by war, I wonder aloud how this can be anyone’s home, sweet home.

As someone who always marvels at the ability of children’s authors and illustrators to address local and global issues with heart and originality, I make a beeline for the library at times like this.  The books I’m sharing here run the gamut from harrowing to healing, silly to sentimental.  There are old favorites, new illustrations, and some freshly imagined stories about home and how it feels when you find it.  

 A Shelter for Sadness

Booth, Anne.     Illus. by David Litchfield.   2021

This beautiful story offers us a fresh way of imagining shelter and processing strong feelings at the same time.  We meet a boy who tells us at the outset that sadness has come to live with him, and he is building it a shelter.  The boy makes a lean-to of tree limbs separate from, but in view of, his house.  The shelter has colored lights, windows, and curtains for looking out onto the world or closing it off.  Sadness has plenty of room to run or sit, be quiet or loud, get small or big.  Sadness, as imagined by illustrator, Litchfield, has a shape, and is a coequal character here.  It can do whatever it wants. Whatever it feels like.  Because, as the boy reminds us, This is the shelter for my sadness, and it has a right to be there.  The passage of time brings feelings of safety and comfort to both of them.  Booth notes that she was inspired by the writings of Esther (Etty) Hillesum, a Jewish Dutch diarist who died in the Holocaust.  This notion of giving space and shelter to one’s sorrows in order to have room in one’s heart for beauty and richness figures prominently in her work and short life.

A House Is a House for Me

Hoberman, Mary Ann.   Illus. by Betty Fraser.   1978

It was love at first sight for me and this rhyming wonder about houses and homes…and it has remained a favorite through hundreds of readings.  In fact, the shiny new copy I’m looking at right now is a testament to its staying power.  My decades long love affair with A House Is a House for Me requires qualifying now, though.  The page with lines describing Native American and Native Canadian tribal members and their homes reads exactly as it did in 1978, and it is outdated now.  It includes misinformation in fact and in perception.  Just one page and four short lines…is this a mountain or hole for a mouse or a mole?  The work of building a more inclusive portrait of people of color requires courage–page by page in picture books as well as in conversation.  I wouldn’t dream of excluding this National Book Award winner that’s jampacked with hilarious and mind-bending notions of home from my list…but I would love for future editions to reflect the changes in language and landscape that have occurred since it was first published.  It would be a fitting tribute to Hoberman who passed away in 2023 and whose precision with words and rhymes were her calling cards.   

Is This a House for Hermit Crab?

McDonald, Megan.   Illus. by Katherine Tillotson.   2024

Text copyright 1990.  Illus. by S.D. Schindler.

Meet Hermit Crab.  He’s outgrown his house, the shell he’s lugging around on his back.  Off he goes in search of a bigger one.  Scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch.  He steps along the shore, by the sea, in the sand.  While exploring the beach he finds a rock, but it won’t budge. Too heavy.  It can’t be his new house.  Scritch-scritch, scritch-scratch.  He spies a tin can, but it’s too noisy.  Scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch.  A piece of driftwood?  Too dark.  Scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch.  A pail left behind after a day of play.  Too deep.  Poor Hermit Crab.  Will he ever find a house that fits just right?  Scritch-scratch your way along the shore, by the sea, in the sand with him to see what turns up—and over–for his comfort and protection.

This perfect little story has found a new home at Neal Porter Books, complete with luminous new illustrations in watercolor, acrylic, finger paint, and collage by Katherine Tillotson.

Homeland:  My Father Dreams of Palestine

Moushabeck, Hannah.    Illus. by Reem Madooh.   2023

Sometimes home is a memory brought vividly to life in bedtime stories.  So it is in Homeland:  My Father Dreams of Palestine, this beautiful and poignant picture book that doubles as autobiography.  Hannah and her sisters know they are in for a bedtime treat when they hear coins jingling in their father’s pockets as he comes upstairs to tuck them in.  Sometimes he whistles them to sleep.  Sometimes he tells them stories about his homeland, a distant place the girls have never seen, the place he and his family were forced to flee in 1948, the place that is more memory now than ever.

Author Moushabeck is a second-generation Palestinian American writer who has filled her first picture book with the light and love of her extended family and their homeland. Kuwaiti illustrator, Madooh, in her picture book debut, depicts the teeming life of Jerusalem so vividly you can almost hear the juice man play brass cups and saucers to announce his arrival in the neighborhood and smell the pickled cucumbers and turnips served in the café where Father works.  From endpapers that look like photos, black and white from Palestine in the front, full color from wherever in the world families live now at the back, the union of words and images here reminds us of the humanity of immigrants and refugees everywhere who dare to dream of home.  

Tar Beach

Ringgold, Faith.   1991

25^th Anniversary Edition

Tar Beach is an easy pick, I know.  Cassie Louise Lightfoot is a character for the ages.  She’s an eight-year-old superhero who ought to be part of the Marvel Universe. Maybe she is.  With her long braids, polka dotted dresses, trailing sashes, and outstretched arms, she flies above us all understanding more about home and family, freedom and justice, little brothers and ice cream than the rest of us put together, I think.  She and her birth mother, Faith Ringgold, were both ahead of their times and also very much of them.  Their journeys, powered by restless imagination and a fierce quest for beauty and truth, set a very high standard.  Rest in peace, Faith Ringgold. 1930-2024

The Blue House

Wahl, Phoebe.   2020

Leo and his dad live in an old blue house.  It’s just the two of them, and they make every inch of it their home, inside and out.  They build forts, play music, and warm up the kitchen by baking a pie when the furnace is on the fritz. The yard is big enough for a trampoline, vegetable garden, and a clothesline full of clothes that flap in the breeze.  Even though it’s beginning to show signs of wear and tear, it is theirs to love…and love it they do.  When a SOLD sign appears on the house next door and construction begins on the newly empty lot, the writing is on the wall. The blue house will be torn down, too, and Leo and his dad must find a new place to make home.

Wahl, who lives in Bellingham, uses watercolor, gouache, collage, and colored pencil to convey a playful and loving household of two. The disruption to their lives is keenly felt by both father and son, but Leo is especially upset. Dad listens and offers hugs. He also pulls out his electric guitar and cranks up the amp so the two can rage, scream, and stomp out their anger at the situation. By story’s end we are reassured that Dad and Leo have relocated and are on the way to making a new home. There’s a pie baking in the oven and the two are dancing again–a bit more sedately this time.