Module 2: The Little House

Book Summary: This is a cute picture storybook about a house that begins in the country, then goes to the city and back to the country.  The little house was built very strong and on the top of a hill in the country. The house is curious is about what life would be like beyond the hill where she can see the city lights. Very soon, streets are built, then high-rise apartments, subways, railroads and sooner or later you can barely notice the house within the busy street life. One day the great, great, great-grandchild of the man who built the house walks by and notices the house and realizes it is the house her grandfather built.  She gets a moving company to lift the house up whole and moves it out into the country on another hill.  The house is remodeled and back to its original condition.


Reference: Burton,V. L. (1942). The little house. Boston,MA:Houghton Mufflin Company.


Impression: I could do nothing but smile and cry while reading this book.  It is such a warm and friendly book that makes you want to go out and purchase a nice country home.  I just want to get up and get away from the hustle and bustle of the city life to have some piece and quiet.  I never thought about the fact that in the city, you cannot hear the birds chirping or see the stars in the sky at night.  Matter of fact, I don't ever look up in the sky to notice because of all the actions going on around me.  I would recommend this book to ages 4-9 and grades K-3 because it can helped build vocabulary and the way the text flows in wavy lines and circles.  It helps to build the mood and setting of the book.

With this book being published in the 40's, it's illustrations are true to the time era.  I would categorized the illustrations as being naive, because of how theobjectsin the pictures are proportioned on the page.  You can get a good understanding of how the little house was started inthe country and as time traveled it disappeared.  The use of black and gray for the city subway, smoke and fog helped in contrasting the nostalgic feel of the little house on the hill.

Professional Reviews: 

Amazon.com Review

"Once upon a time there was a Little House way out in the country. She was a pretty Little House and she was strong and well built." So begins Virginia Lee Burton's classic The Little House, winner of the prestigious Caldecott Medal in 1943. The rosy-pink Little House, on a hill surrounded by apple trees, watches the days go, by from the first apple blossoms in the spring through the winter snows. Always faintly aware of the city's distant lights, she starts to notice the city encroaching on her bucolic existence. First a road appears, which brings horseless carriages and then trucks and steamrollers. Before long, more roads, bigger homes, apartment buildings, stores, and garages surround the Little House. Her family moves out and she finds herself alone in the middle of the city, where the artificial lights are so bright that the Little House can no longer see the sun or the moon. She often dreams of "the field of daisies and the apple trees dancing in the moonlight." Children will be saddened to see the lonely, claustrophobic, dilapidated house, but when a woman recognizes her and whisks her back to the country where she belongs, they will rejoice. Young readers are more likely to be drawn in by the whimsical, detailed drawings and the happy ending than by anything Burton might have been implying about the troubling effects of urbanization. (Ages 3 to 6)

From Kirkus Review
From what is available,this promises to be another beguiling book in the series which includes Choo Choo and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. Children have an instinctive personal feeling about houses, and the idea of the friendly little house that found itself forgotten when the city moved in on it will catch their imaginations. The pictures are in full color an on every page. Virginia Burton has a sense of pattern that makes her pictures almost like a tapestry.

References:

Kirkus Review. (1942). [Review of the book The little house, by V. L. Burton]. Retrieved from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/virginia-lee-burton/little-house-burton/

The Little House. (n.d.). [Review of the book The little house, by V. L. Burton]. Amazon.com. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/Little-House-Virginia-Lee-Burton-ebook/dp/B00DFM6COS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1437279570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+little+house

Library Uses: This book could be used for Compare and Contrast Lesson with older students in the elementary.  You could also use this book as an art lesson to study the colors and lines of the illustrations. 

English teachers could use this book as a way to begin students writing poetry that may or may not rhyme. The flow of the words and use of vocabulary is very poetic in nature.