THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR

A house learns to adjust to change.

The house stands in an open field and, alone, withstands occasional harsh weather. Seasons pass, and the house forges on alone—until the day the wind blows “something unexpected his way.” Two new dwellings have been built relatively close to the house. The house responds by closing his shutters. After many years, a road is built near the house, and “row upon row of blank faces” stare back at him when he opens his shutters. A neighborhood of houses has been erected (fashioned in the illustrations from cardboard cutouts), and the house closes his shutters again to them all. When he finally opens some side shutters to take a peek at what’s around him, he sees rows of houses made from a wide array of materials, and he finally seems to accept his new neighbors. The illustrations feature photographs of 3-D models of the houses accompanied by spare and textured drawings and collage elements in pictures with intentionally off-kilter perspectives and unbalanced compositions that emphasize the house’s loneliness. Darker, shadowed spreads shift to ones filled with light after the house decides to embrace his neighbors. The narrative initially seems to hint the story will be a The Little House–like one about urban sprawl (with the initial sameness of all the new homes), yet it shifts to being one about accepting change. There’s little here to convince children to care about the house; similar stories have been told with significantly more inviting characters, Virginia Lee Burton’s classic just one of them.

Unsuccessful.