The House by the Lake: The True Story of a House, Its History, and the Four Families Who Made It Home

Harding adapts his adult memoir of the same name for younger readers, tracing the shadow of war as it falls across a one-story cottage and the people who share it. Harding’s great-grandfather built the house on the shores of a lake outside Berlin, where he lived contentedly with his wife and children before WWII: “The days went around like a wheel,” Harding writes. Eventually, “angry men”—Nazis—seize the house and expel the family. Other tenants arrive, then flee. Then “a man with a fluffy hat” occupies the house, and the wall that divides West from East Germany is erected through the backyard, “with tall towers and bright lights and barking dogs.” After the wall comes down and the man dies, time and nature take over. Decades later, Harding restores the house as a memorial to his great-grandparents, discussed in back matter. Ethereal collages by Teckentrup (My Little Book of Big Questions) capture the house’s clean lines; the light-filled summer foliage around it; and the grim, gray tones of war. Younger readers unfamiliar with the history of WWII and 20th-century Germany can meet them here at a safe, albeit uncontextualized, distance. Ages 7–10. [em](Sept.) [/em]