THE HOUSE BY THE LAKE

Between 1927 and 1999, a house sees four families move in and depart in a picture book adapted from the author’s 2016 book for adults of the same name.

As in Virginia Lee Burton’s classic The Little House (1942), the house itself is the story’s hub. Perched lakeside near Berlin, this house alternately feels “happy,” “abandoned and unloved,” and “alive.” Descriptions of the residents are similarly romantic: “a kind doctor and his cheery wife”; “the musical family”; “a man with a fluffy hat.” How jarring, then, for the families to be coming and going due to events such as genocide, and how much more jarring for those events to be only vaguely implied. Little boys grow from playing in the sand to wearing Hitler Youth uniforms, but the uniforms aren’t identified. World War II and the Berlin Wall go unnamed too, while Nazis are called only “angry men.” The fluffy-hatted man “spie[s] on his neighbors”—huh? Why? This evasive piece sidesteps atrocities and even bare historical details. Readers who already know enough pertinent history to understand Harding’s subtle allusions aren’t the same readers who’d enjoy a lakeside house’s seasonal and emotional cycles. An author’s note supplies names and dates but still never delves into explaining the Nazis, Hitler Youth, or the Berlin Wall; it identifies which families were Jewish but never says why that’s relevant. Teckentrup’s textured artwork is similarly allusive, including a terrifying scene of aerial bombardment and another of a line of tanks but still failing to fill in the narrative gaps. All characters depicted have pale skin.

Aims for charm and historical import but achieves neither.