The House

Children's Literature - Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz

The house, the subject of this tale, tells its own story over the years, in Lewis's carefully crafted, appropriate quatrains. After an introduction to its years from its construction in 1656 and its subsequent habitation and destruction, the story itself begins when children rediscover it in 1900. A dated vignette appears on the page across from the poem; following this is a textless double page illustration filled with the myriad details of the activities surrounding the house at that date. As the years pass we see the establishment of a vineyard, the celebration of a wedding, a wartime death, farm activities, a departure, a funeral, physical deterioration of the house, and a final modernization. Through all the times shown, the view of the house and the area around it remains the same. On three double pages, Innocenti creates detailed worlds peopled with honest folk going about their mundane tasks. The terraces by the house act as mini-stages upon which the historical events take place. The artist recreates the changing times, clothing, agriculture, along with the condition of the house. Each double page scene offers a vivid visual representation with different emotional content. The paper jacket reproduces one of the scenes inside, while the cover has an elegant cloth spine and just the title scripted across the front. Reviewer: Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz

School Library Journal

Gr 4 Up—The walls in a stone farmhouse literally talk in this first-person narrative that deals with the ravages of time and their effects on the structure and its inhabitants. After a brief history, the house (constructed in 1656, "a plague year") fast forwards to the dawn of the 20th century, when children discover its ruins. The quatrains, one to a spread, alternate between an AABB and ABBA rhyme scheme, thus avoiding singsong predictability. The formal tone, sophisticated vocabulary, and preoccupation with life's inevitable losses register the sensibility of an older and somewhat melancholy speaker: "From wife to widow…and the depths of grief./My furnace burns as children leave for school,/Bundled in virtue, books, and classroom fuel./How beautiful their innocence, how brief." Adults will connect to the sentiments, while children will pore over Innocenti's marvelously detailed spreads, composed in an oversize, vertical format and set in an Italian hill town. Readers see a family rebuild, move in, celebrate marriage and childbirth, and mourn their dead. Winnowing, grape harvesting, military and refugee occupation, and hippies picnicking on the terraced hills of the once again crumbling property are among the activities captured in the watercolors. The viewer's perspective is fixed, but the light, weather conditions, and human interventions create fresh worlds on each page. Innocenti's whimsy surfaces in the 1999 do over. In the subset of books dealing intelligently with the effects of time on a single location, this is a provocative choice.—Wendy Lukehart, Washington DC Public Library