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Synopsis
When the boxes are unpacked and the books are shelved (alphabetically), all a young girl wants to do is settle into her house.
Grandmom says that it takes time to learn to love a house right. And with a little patience and imagination, this young girl is determined for hers to become homegrown.
Award-winning illustrator E.B. Lewis's warm, familial scenes pair with Janet Wong's yearning text for a story of wishes, dreams, and a true sense of home.
Children's Literature
This is an absolutely wonderful book about a girl who wants to have the kind of "homegrown" house her grandmother has. While her parents are busy looking for new houses or special features that will be connected to the house, the narrator, an eight-year-old girl with a very wise grandmother, focuses on the smaller things that make a house a home: "Bunches of dried lavender hanging upside down/from the ceiling of my bedroom,/which will be painted five different colors/including rainbow tie-dye." Grandma also has a number of wise and humorous comments to make throughout the text: "takes time/to settle into a house,/to learn to love it right,/to make it feel homegrown./Thirty years should do it." The illustrations for the text are rendered in watercolors and really capture the detail found within the text. This is a wonderful book for kids, especially when they are visiting those fabulous grandparents who emulate the wise woman found in this book. Reviewer: Jean Boreen, Ph.D.