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The Little House (平装)
by Virginia Lee Burton
| Category:
Picture books, Award-winning books, Age 4-8 |
| Market price: ¥ 98.00
MSL price:
¥ 88.00
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| Stock:
In Stock |
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
A beautifully illustrated book with profound messages that young children definitely will get and think about. Should be in every kid's library. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 7 items |
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Carolyn (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-12 00:00>
This is another great classic that should be in every child's library. A winner of the Caldecott award in 1942, this book is just timeless. It begins in Victorian times showing the little house with horse-drawn carriages and ladies dressed in their finery, and progresses to the "advances" with cars and trucks. It tells the story of a house that wonders what it's like to live in the city and unfortunately, finds out. Gone is the beautiful countryside which is replaced with large buildings, railways, cars, subways, etc. Then the great-great granddaughter sees the house and moves it back to the countryside to live in it with her family and makes the house very happy. It's a truly neat story because it is what happened to the author's own home. You have to get this book for your children - it's just so sweet and neat how the book ends. Progress isn't always progress. My little guy just loved it and I read my copy to him which shows how important of a classic this one is to have. Mine is over 35 years old.
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Ira Grosman (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-12 00:00>
The Little House was my favorite bedtime story, so the book's illustrations bring back memories of a happy childhood. I remember my mom reading it to me endless numbers of times. Although I did not know who wrote the book, the vivid illustrations in the book and the author's text made me realize that this little house had just as much feeling as we humans do. Just watching the serene countryside where this house stood gradually transformed into a big city filled with noise and pollution causes this little house to feel just as disappointed with urban sprawl as we humans do and to yourn for a more simpler life in the countryside. This is a very heartwarming tale of survival. In a phoenixlike fashion, the author shows that although the house eventaully becomes delapidated and forgotten, the house is eventually rescued by a descendant of the building's original owner and returned to the more peaceful life in the countryside that this house once knew. |
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Roz Levine (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-12 00:00>
"Once upon a time there was a Little House way out in the country. She was a pretty Little House and she was strong and well built." She sat on a hill covered with daisies and surrounded by apple trees, and enjoyed the sun during the day, the moon and stars at night, and the changing seasons. And way, way off in the distance she could see just a hint of the city lights. "The Little House was curious about the city and wondered what it would be like to live there." One day surveyors came, then steam shovels, trucks, and steam rollers, and soon they had built a road. "Now the Little House watched the trucks and automobiles going back and forth to the city. Gasoline stations... roadside stands... and small houses followed the new road. Everyone and everything moved much faster now than before." Soon more roads were built, then more houses, apartments, tenements, schools, stores, and garages crowded the Little House. A trolley ran back and forth in front of her, an elevated train ran above her, and a subway beneath. She was sad and lonely, dirty and in disrepair. "No one wanted to live in her and take care of her any more."
Then one fine morning the great-great-granddaughter of the man who built the Little House was hurrying by. She recognized the poor Little House and stopped... Originally published in 1942, Virginia Lee Burton's timeless classic is as fresh and charming today, as it was sixty years ago. Her gentle and engaging text is full of empathy, and brings the endearing Little House to life. Youngsters will feel the joy and contentment of country life when the Little House had purpose and was full of family and fun, and the sadness and loneliness as the city encroaches, and she becomes shabby, broken, and forgotten. Ms Burton's sweet and simple, illustrations are whimsical, and add just the right touch. Perfect for little ones 3-7 and complete with a satisfying happily-ever-after ending, The Little House is a perfect little treasure to read and share with friends and family now, and future generations in the years to come.
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Bruce Horner (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-12 00:00>
This has got to be the best all-round Virginia Lee Burton book, which means it's one of the best children's books of all time. The simple prose reaches a level of lyricism not found in Mike Mulligan, and the illustrations have a folksy charm and energy that's just right. Reading it as an adult, one thinks of all the little houses that were NOT saved, and of the ongoing suburban sprawl that's even now despoiling the landscape, but the fact that the eponymous little house is moved and cared for once again by the end makes it a good story for little kids. Other books by Burton tend to wear me down with repetition, but this one remains fresh with almost every rereading that my kid's demand.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-12 00:00>
The Little House is a children's book filled with lots of illustrations and color changes which helps the author describe the story line along with having words. This story starts with a little house built in the countryside, and the man who built it says, "The Little House shall never be sold for gold or silver and she will live to see our great-great-grandchildren's great-great-grandchildren living in her." Therefore, the Little House stays in the same spot and watches the time go by and wonders what it would be like to live in the city that is beginning to grow nearby. As the city grows around it, the poor Little House is sad and stays that way till a family member moves it back to the country to stay forever.
As Sonia Landes commented in her 1985 Children's Literature Association Quarterly article, "Picture Books as Literature", "One role of pictures in a picture book is to enhance the meaning of the story by illustrating the words" (51). Burton succeeds in fulfilling this role by drawing the front of the Little House like a face that illustrates every feeling. In the beginning of the story, it was a quaint little house. The house has a happy expression: the front steps curl up as if in a smile. The happiness of the house is not only shown through the face of the house but through the use of different colors. During the good times, the Little House and the background surrounding it are decorated with bright colors such as green, yellow, and red. The house keeps this happy look throughout the first part of the book, and the coloring in these periods is very bright too. Burton is able to show that the house is happy for an extended period of time by illustrating the seasons. Through the book, the reader understands that it is springtime because of the new harvest and the blossoming pink trees. The text reads, "In the Spring, when the days grew longer and the sun warmer." As the reader keeps turning the pages, summer is the next season that is portrayed, with kids playing in a blue pool beside the house. The story then explains how she, "Watches the garden grow, and she watches the apples turn red and ripen." This transformation is even further illustrated via the drawings of fall and winter.
As the story goes on and the house is surrounded by the city, the house even looks sad because the windows are cracked and the front door is blocked off to everyone. Its face is in the shape of a frown. The colors around the house change to dark colors like gray and black. The sky that is bright blue in the beginning is now black, and the beautiful seasons are no longer able to be distinguished between one another. As Burton explains, "The air was filled with dust and smoke, and the noise was so loud that it shook the Little House. Now she couldn't tell when Spring came, or Summer or Fall, or Winter. It all seemed the same." Finally, when the house gets to move back to the country, it has the smiling steps and a happy appearance again. The changing of colors from the dark city to the bright country is extremely vivid during the moving stage. As the house is being rolled to the country, the background drawing features the city with gray and brown buildings, and as it gets closer to the new land, pink flowers appear again. The sky is now clearer, and the little house is able to tell the difference between the seasons again. The illustrations and coloring both strengthen the change in the mood of the story and describe it. This cycle of moods from happy to sad to happiness again is used quite often in children's books. This is illustrated in other books like Steig's, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and also Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. "The classic, archetypal children's closure theme is the quest - what I like to call Home-Adventure-Home" (Landes 53). Many authors end with a happy ending because it gives the reader a sense of security that everything is alright. The authors feel that if a child is scared of the ending, they will not likely recommend the book to their friends or read it again. Therefore, book authors, such as Burton, like to end their story with a sense of security.
Burton did a wonderful job at opening the story with a bright, happy beginning. Then she allowed the Little House to experience a little discomfort in her happy life, but she made sure that by the end everything was better again. The house was out of the dark, crowded city and back to the colorful countryside. There the Little House could watch the changing seasons, and the house could leave peacefully. |
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S. Puglisi (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-12 00:00>
When I was "told" my theme would be "Home Sweet Home" in my 5th unit of study in 1st grade I thought of this book. Though I am not asked to think of anything. We read it for years gone by in primary classroom instruction, and I ordered it again to read when I had a moment for this unit. That time came today as the children in Room 10 listened for our "key vocabulary" and were enchanted as children have been since the 1940's release of a story about a house becoming obsolete, aging, being replaced by future building while in her day representing the best of her times and quite possibly representing a kind of beauty that can only be understood and appreciated within her true and original context.
This is a story of a beautiful Little House written by the genius of Virginia Lee Burton. She sits "way out in the country" built strong and sturdy, never to be sold for generations of a family to endure within her safe haven. She is happy, she is stable, but she "sees" the lights of the city and she is curious. At this point I feel it safe to interject as a young girl growing up in West Virginia far from city and growing up in the peace of country these words spoke to my heart. I wondered about the city too, wanted to know. I saw the changes in my world, saw future, recall first days seeing a tape recorder, recall the ideas of fast food and the movement of our life into the age of rocket and moon. A great story to explore metaphor with children. How are we like the Little House, how am I?
In the story the Little House watched the seasons, learned the cycles of nature and the book does such a lovely job placing the child reader or listener into this rural setting. For me it is a perfect telling of the naive Garden of Eden before the Fall construct, gamboling, rural, naturalistic with the seasons each illustrated and reinforced with charming traditional illustration for the child. But as the story unfolds the lights of city grow closer with changes entering text and illustration. I grew up with many of these changes, but it tells of horses replaced by roads and machine....Time is passing in the story, an age of mechanized progress enters the pictures.
Gasoline, speed, faster and faster are introduced as concepts that drive the forward progress around the Little House. She is now shown surrounded by track homes, darker clouds, and telephone poles. Crowding enters the page. Artistically it is busy, congested, more active visually, less peaceful. Now the Little House can't be sold, not because of the eternity of a family staying on her piece of land, but because a city has engulfed her and she has no worth relative to the expansion. She sits surrounded now pictorially by building. Written as it is, my classroom children found this "sad", or asked repeatedly if she would "die". I kept saying let's wait a bit and see....but I knew their concern. It would seem headed for sad death. If I were to relate to the Little House metaphorically I feel myself as a teacher as these pages represent, surrounded by the mindless march of time. Looked at as valueless, seen as out of place in a world of "progress". And the Little House misses her fields and flowers accepts this must be "the city" and wonders if she likes it or not.
I must admit I did stop reading here to ask children if they thought this was the life the Little House was "supposed " to live. One child speaking carefully said, " It is the life that she must accept." Another commented, "I know the Little House wanted to see the city but now she can't go back." Such it is when we leave Eden, such it is when the march of progress strips our naivety. Such is taking on our adulthood. Now we are to reconcile truth, reflect, make meaning and find ways to face what we must. To decide based on our rational mind combined with an awareness of things we could never have fathomed and indeed may not understand fully once revealed. The Little House stands swallowed by city, speed, time, and unable to feel season or know her truths at all.
Buildings are torn, replaced and destroyed around he... r as progress destroys what was replacing it with what is. Here my students shook with, "Oh no's" and statements like this one, "Oh she's going to die and never know her happiness." It is a point of despair, and interesting thing to place before children. Certainly this is the point in the story that I feel speaks with greatest power. And she decides that she cannot like this place that has grown around her. She has no way to relate to it. It is not a city able to even remotely understand what this Little House knew. Not even listening they are of two different worlds. And she admits sadness. She is filled with sorrow and becomes really broken down and lost.
The ending of the story is about hope. A many generation removed child of this house buys her again, restores and moves her far from city, back to country where she takes her knowledge within her walls and in the calm of the beauty of nature silently resumes her peaceful balance. Once more able to be who she is. Understanding in some way where she has been. Understanding now no longing for that other place. She has conquered longing.
To this tale my students sat in silence and in contemplation. I asked if they would like to draw this little house and all students, all, represented her in the country, in bucolic setting and at the bottom all wrote Home at Peace a phrase they asked me to spell. I'll post these when I find the digital camera. It's a wonderful story fit for any 1st grade as relevant now as ever. |
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-12 00:00>
I go pickup library books for my daughter to save time and as a surprise for her. While looking for books I think she'd enjoy I came across this and was so excited! I remembered this book from childhood and was filled with joy and anticipation for finding it and of what my daughter would think.
She absolutely Loved it.
The entertaining, lively story is one to be enjoyed and cherished of a pretty pink house in the country that thought and felt. There is a lot of meaning in the story:
1 Savor each day.
2 Be thankful for what you have.
3 Be responsible and take care of what you own.
4 Cherish your family and plan a legacy you want to leave them (not just leaving money or possessions but a testament of the good character you have and want them to continue in.)
5 Do whatever you do to your best ability and do it the right way the first time.
6 Be careful what you wish for.
7 Be happy with what you have--
and so much more.
The illustrations are some of the best in existence. They tell the story almost without the need for words. There is so much color and detail and many tiny pictures of animals and children and people for interested eyes to find and enjoy.
An exceptional book and Caldecott winner. Soar! |
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1 Total 1 pages 7 items |
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