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Summary
Summary
From Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Ted Kooser and rising talent Jon Klassen comes a poignant tale of loss, change, and nature's quiet triumph.
When the house was new, not a single tree remained on its perfect lawn to give shade from the sun. The children in the house trailed the scent of wild trees to neighboring lots, where thick bushes offered up secret places to play. When the children grew up and moved away, their father, alone in the house, continued his battle against blowing seeds, plucking out sprouting trees. Until one day the father, too, moved away, and as the empty house began its decline, the trees began their approach. At once wistful and exhilarating, this lovely, lyrical story evokes the inexorable passage of time -- and the awe-inspiring power of nature to lift us up.
Author Notes
Ted Kooser, the United States Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his book of poems Delights & Shadows. He is the author of twelve full-length volumes of poetry and several books of nonfiction, and his work has appeared in many periodicals. Bag in the Wind, illustrated by Barry Root, was his first picture book. Ted Kooser lives in Garland, Nebraska.
Jon Klassen is the author-illustrator of I Want My Hat Back. The first picture book he illustrated, Cats' Night Out by Caroline Stutson, won the Governor General's Award for illustration in his native Canada. Jon Klassen now lives in Los Angeles.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A man who lives in a small white house keeps his lawn tidy and free of tree seedlings while his two children play in the woods at the edge of the property. But the children grow up, the man abandons the house, and the trees he tried to defeat take over; after many years, they lift the house slowly but surely off the ground. Former poet laureate Kooser observes the slowly unfolding events in limpid prose, while Klassen (I Want My Hat Back), working with a Wyeth-like palette of winter browns and grays, shows the house, the father, and his children from many angles, but almost always from a distance, as the trees must see them. As in Kooser's first picture book, Bag in the Wind, themes of isolation and mankind's sometimes uneasy relationship with the natural world are prominent. Young readers may not know what to make of the story, though they will recognize the futility of trying to fight nature's onslaught. The magic is in the trees' final deed, and the story is a long prologue to it. Ages 4-10. Illustrator's agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
A father and his two young children live in a small house on a quiet lot bordered by dense stands of noble, fragrant trees. The boy and the girl scramble and play in the thicket while their father tends to his precise lawn, mowing over the steady intrusion of saplings sprouted from seeds borne in on the wind. In time the children grow and leave, and so does their father. The house is abandoned. Dilapidated and forgotten, it relents, succumbing to the encroaching forest, which lifts the house from its foundation and carries it into the forest's canopy. This bittersweet tale is rife with tension, between young and old, order and chaos, yesterday and tomorrow. Poet Kooser's soft, plain narrative matches that tension, at once frank and nostalgic. Klassen's somber, dappled watercolors add to it, juxtaposing the house's rectilinear form against nature's organic shapes. He affords the house a parcel of compositional space, but the rust-tinged palette of muddy browns and greens makes clear the inevitable: nature will out. This quiet elegy to the passage of time offers some simple and profound musings to contemplative young readers curious about the future and their role in it. thom barthelmess (c) Copyright 2012. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Though there's a family involved, the real star of this multilayered modern parable is a plot of land. A father and two children live in a little house on a perfectly groomed spot. The father mows the lawn and pulls the sproutlings left by nearby trees with relentless determination while the kids play in the lush neighboring woods. The family eventually moves on, and over the years the abandoned house falls apart bit by bit, quietly and sadly. But there's magic at play here, as the trees' seeds take root and grow and grip the house and ever so slowly lift it from the ground high into the air. Just as the trees are pushed out by the man in the first half, the artwork initially functions as stoic background for the story, with wide-angle perspectives filled with plenty of open space and muted colors. But in the second part, as the trees take over, Klassen's compositions command more and more attention, elbowing the text into the periphery and subtly reinforcing the themes in play. The final picture of the house held aloft by innumerable branches attests to the slow, resolute power of nature, and Kooser's poetic writing lands on a quiet, beautiful coda: it floats there like a tree house, a house in the trees, a house held together by the strength of trees. Unfolding with uncommon grace, the environmental heart of this story is revealed obliquely but powerfully.--Chipman, Ian Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
WHERE is home - and why do we yearn for it so? Many celebrated children's books, directly or indirectly explore these questions, from "The Little House " by Virginia Lee Burton, to Margaret Wise Brown's "Little Fur Family" to Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" series. In "A Home for Bird," Philip C. Stead, the 2011 Caldecott winner for "A Sick Day for Amos McGee," seeks to answer them in a more lighthearted way. The story concerns a toad named Vernon who finds a wooden blue bird fallen off a speeding pickup truck. Bird says nothing as he is introduced to Vernon's friends, Skunk and Porcupine, in fact, throughout the story, Bird is mute while Vernon shows him the river and forest and his other favorite places. Skunk and Porcupine speculate that Bird is lost and homesick, so Vernon searches for a home for his new friend: a bird cage, a birdhouse, a nest. When none of these elicit a reply, Vernon and Bird go on an aerial journey in a teacup tied to a balloon. The search ends ingeniously with Bird happily installed in an empty blue cuckoo clock. It is there we finally hear Bird's voice and the story comes full circle (observant readers will notice the conclusion was quietly and cleverly set up in the opening pages). Stead's splashy, colorful pictures are warm, funny, appealing and drawn with a light touch. Skunk and Porcupine are portrayed with soft, blurry edges that add to their charm. Often, Stead uses color to make emotional and symbolic connections, as when Bird finds a home in a clock of the exact shade of blue he is. Taken together, text and image convey the message that each of us has one true home and nothing else will do. The former poet laureate Ted Kooser's "House Held Up by Trees" is a lyric, poetic story, stark but also imbued with a haunting beauty. One could easily imagine the tale, in a slightly different form, as a Kooser poem for adults. A man and his two children live in a country house set "on a bare square of earth." The emotionally distant father is intent on creating and maintaining a perfect lawn. His children, however, love "to play among the trees" in the adjacent wooded lot. From the outset, tension exists between nature and human nature, the daughter and son finding solace in the outdoors even as the father continually tries to mow it down and contain it. Time passes, the children grow up and leave, and eventually the old man moves away too. The empty house becomes derelict, the windows broken out, the paint flaking, sparrows nesting inside. Without people, the house and its surroundings become the story's main characters, one passive, the other active. As nature takes over, seedlings sprout everywhere and grow into saplings, and finally into trees that raise the broken home off the ground. Jon Klassen's illustrations are quiet, delicate and nuanced, amplifying the text in fresh, original ways through the use of unexpected angles and perspective. The pictures follow the house through different times of day and night, and through seasons and years. A powerful image of a house held aloft like an offering in the hands of nature closes the book, an image that stayed with me long after. The story's preoccupation with emotional isolation, abandonment, decay and transformation has keen parallels, I thought, with the arc of some human lives (a metaphor that will, fortunately, sail over the heads of most young readers). The power of nature to win out or hold sway over modern life is similarly taken up in "Out of the Way! Out of the Way!" by Urna Krishnaswami. In a village in India, a tiny tree sprouts in the unlikeliest of places, the middle of a dusty, well-worn path. A small boy carefully piles stones around the seedling to keep it from being trampled, and it steadily grows into a majestic tree as the path becomes a busy road, and then an even busier highway full of roaring traffic. The title, used very effectively as a refrain throughout the book, emphasizes that change is hurrying us along much faster than we want logo. The chaotic, packed pictures by Uma Krishnaswamy (a different person from the author), a combination of primary colors and black-and-white line drawings, have an old-fashioned, outdated feel to them. Children who like the "busyness" and manic activity of books by the writer-illustrator Richard Scarry might like these. But for some readers, myself included, the art could feel a bit too busy and bewildering, lacking as it does a focal point. Maybe this is the point: that there is no one place to focus, relax or stop in our unsettled world, except perhaps under the spreading branches of a tree that has managed, against all odds, to flourish in the middle of a road. All three of these books speak to our deep need for quietude and sanctuary, and for that actual and metaphorical place called home. Like light, air and water, home is something we cannot do without, whether it's in the form of a cuckoo clock, a house held up by trees or the space of silence beneath a spreading tree. Elizabeth Spires's most recent book is "I Heard God Talking to Me: William Edmondson and His Stone Carvings."
School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-5-A lyrical, melancholy prose text by former U.S. poet laureate Kooser is paired with ethereal illustrations to tell the story of a house and the family who once lived there. A man raises his daughter and son in a little house surrounded by lawn, which he keeps mowed and totally devoid of trees. But on each side, luxurious woods flourish, luring the children to explore the mysteries of nature. When they grow up and leave home, and the father becomes too old to care for the property, he moves to the city, abandoning the house, which no one wants to buy. As it falls into ruin, the seeds and pods so long squelched by the man's mowing begin to sprout and grow, some so close around the walls of the house that they keep it from falling down. Eventually they lift it off its foundation and raise it high above the ground "like a tree house...a house held together by the strength of trees...." A palette of muted browns, grays, and greens predominates in illustrations where the little white house and two iconic folding chairs out front suggest a subtext of loneliness and loss, even as strong verticals and occasional splashes of red lend a sense of hope. Varies perspectives provide strong visual interest and should keep older readers engaged in a story brimming with sadness and a touch of wonder and promise.-Marie Orlando, formerly at Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
