Author: Stephanie Parsley Ledyard
Illustrator: Chris Sasaki
Genre: Fiction Picture Book
Target Ages: 4-8
Prime Audiences: Children Experiencing a Family Move to a New Home
Publisher: Neal Porter Books
Publication Year: 2019
Home is that familiar place with all the familiar things than make it comfortable, that make it "home." But more importantly, home is the family who love you, no matter where your physical home might be, even if that place changes. This is the comforting message to readers of Stephanie Parsley Ledyard and Chris Sasaki's picture book Home Is a Window.
Ledyard's narrative is a "quiet" story about moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar. It echoes the unnamed protagonist's comfortable routine of living in her family's home but also the gentle uprooting when her family moves away to a different town. The refrain "Home is" is interrupted as her family arrives at a new home, but she quickly identifies the comforts of their new home, especially "the people gathered near," her father and mother and brother. And so the narrative ends with that pleasant word– "Home." Sasaki's illustrations, especially the color tones, deftly match Ledyard's words, and the endpapers frame the journey from the old neighborhood to the new neighborhood.
Readers who are apprehensive about a family's move will identify with the protagonist and find the same comfort she does in knowing home is always where your loved ones are— in fact, your loved ones themselves.
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