The House That’s Your Home

Lloyd-Jones (Bunny’s First Spring) and Dyer (Time for Bed) offer a reflective appreciation of the treasured people, objects, and routines in a child’s life. Throughout, a redheaded, rosy-cheeked girl is seen in and around her family’s bucolic countryside house—playing with the family pets, quietly reading on a window seat, watering flowers in a verdant garden—before the story moves on to her world beyond, as she plays with friends at school and walks in the park with her grandparents. Writing in second person, Lloyd-Jones maintains a calming, affirming tone as she drives home themes of belonging and ownership (“A book is Your Book/ And a ball is Your Ball/ And they are Your Things“). While a sense of safety and security resounds, thanks in no small part to Dyer’s lovely gouache-and-pencil illustrations, this is a narrow, privileged vision of home (many readers will not have their own rooms, two-parent homes, bikes, tree swings, etc.). Some children will find this book comforting; others may be left with a sense of the gulf between their lives and the idyllic one seen on page. Ages 3–7. Agent: Elizabeth Harding, Curtis Brown. (Feb.)