Our House: The Stories of Levittown

Tracing the evolution of one house through the recollections of its residents, the author of Prairie Songs and My Daniel once again brings history to life while paying tribute to the birth and growth of one suburban town, Levittown, New York. Starting as a potato field and ending up as a community that ``stretches in all directions, its boundaries lost in the borders'' of neighboring towns, Levittown has changed along with the attitudes and values of its citizens. Through six fictionalized memoirs embellished by Selznick's black-and-white drawings, readers see how milestones of the last 50 years-the invention of television, Kennedy's assassination, the Vietnam War and the ecology movement-are viewed through the eyes of American children. An enormous amount of information, emotion and humor is packed into each one of Conrad's chronologically arranged short stories. Her abilities to fuse fact with fiction and connect the past with the present are nothing less than remarkable. Ages 8-12. (Oct.)