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Caldecott Monday: The Little House
Jul. 4th, 2016 10:47 amThe library still hasn't come through with They Were Strong and Good, so I went on to the 1943 winner, Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House. (Burton is I think more well-known now for Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, to which I was mildly devoted as a small child.)
The Little House of the title is built out in the countryside in the latter half of the nineteenth century. She can see the lights of the city in the distance, and wonders what it's like to live there, but she rests content in the gentle entertainment of the shifting seasons - and the seasons pass, and horseless carriages appear, and the road past her daisy-covered hillside is paved, and houses begin to creep outward from the city and envelop the farmland.
I for one became very concerned as the city crept outward. It grows up all around the Little House, till she has no field of daisies anymore - no lawn at all - just skyscrapers on either side, which block out the sun, and an elevated train up above with rumbles and rattles and shines with bright lights that block out the stars.
"How can this end happily?" I worried. "It's not like the city will recede!" '
But of course it is a picture book, so everything ends up fine. A woman inherits the house and transports it out to a new hill strewn with apple trees, and all is well.
The illustrations are charming. They look deceptively simple, like the kind of thing that a child might draw, only few children could achieve Burton's precision: the same swooping lines of the countryside drawn over and over again. And she gives the Little House such character! The front steps are the mouth and the windows are the eyes and you can just see the sadness growing in it as the pretty curtains disappear and the windows are broken.
The Little House of the title is built out in the countryside in the latter half of the nineteenth century. She can see the lights of the city in the distance, and wonders what it's like to live there, but she rests content in the gentle entertainment of the shifting seasons - and the seasons pass, and horseless carriages appear, and the road past her daisy-covered hillside is paved, and houses begin to creep outward from the city and envelop the farmland.
I for one became very concerned as the city crept outward. It grows up all around the Little House, till she has no field of daisies anymore - no lawn at all - just skyscrapers on either side, which block out the sun, and an elevated train up above with rumbles and rattles and shines with bright lights that block out the stars.
"How can this end happily?" I worried. "It's not like the city will recede!" '
But of course it is a picture book, so everything ends up fine. A woman inherits the house and transports it out to a new hill strewn with apple trees, and all is well.
The illustrations are charming. They look deceptively simple, like the kind of thing that a child might draw, only few children could achieve Burton's precision: the same swooping lines of the countryside drawn over and over again. And she gives the Little House such character! The front steps are the mouth and the windows are the eyes and you can just see the sadness growing in it as the pretty curtains disappear and the windows are broken.
