House Finds a Home

A small house alternates heartbreak and happiness as multiple generations of residents fill his rooms with love in this cozy picture book. “House and his people/ had made a mountain of memories—// Song by song./ Giggle by giggle./ Hug by hug,” Duffield writes. When the homeowners depart, House’s heart feels “as empty as his rooms,” until new owners arrive. As the cycle repeats, House learns to embrace the adage “when one door closes, another door opens.” Matching the text’s polish, Corace’s diminutive dollhouse-style cutaways, rendered in gouache, ink, and pencil, add a narrative layer via art that depicts the period-specific lifestyles of varying occupants, presented with varied skin tones. Record albums occupy the first family, a box TV entertains the next, and later residents install a peace-sign-adorned flag, until a final family, intergenerational and interracial, joyously brings the story full circle, “song by song./ Giggle by giggle./ Hug by hug.” Ages 3–7. (Aug.)