A Little House in a Big Place

In lyrical verse, Acheson writes, “A girl lived in a little house... in the middle of a big place”; the girl’s sibling plays on a patchwork quilt amid patchwork fields. Every day, the girl exchanges waves with the train engineer and wonders whether “she might go away, too” one day. Chalky multimedia art by LeBlond portrays perspective—a little house against a liquid, star-flecked sky; wild strawberries against a vast field; the dot that becomes a train that becomes “an almost invisible dot.” After the engineer tosses the girl his cap on his last day on the job, the girl too moves away from her daily post, on to the business of growing up. Years later, she dons the cap as she herself boards a train to a new place with similarities to her family home, showing that temporal and spatial changes are fluid, necessary, parts of life. Ages 4–7. [em](May) [/em]