by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 29, 2010

"We all saw the new house, in the new town far away..."

But that was months ago, and now the little boy can't remember the house's shape or color. Michael Cadnum does a good job of imagining a child's experience during their family's move into a new house. "The moving men load the sofa and the rolled-up rugs and the painting of the red horses..."

Michael Cadnum is a poet and novelist, according to Wikipedia, and he's learned how to piece a story together from a series of personal details. For example, the family takes a somber walk through the empty house after all the furniture is gone. ("Dad's steps echo, and Mom and I check the empty rooms...") The little boy remembers where the furniture used to be - the sofa and the television - and sees the dents in the steps "where the roller skates tumbled downstairs all by themselves."

There's an interesting story behind the book's illustrations. Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher are a husband-and-wife illustration team, according to the book's jacket. They've worked together on nine different children's books, including Garrison Keillor's "Cat, You Better Come Home" and Dr. Seuss's "My Many Colored Days." And the couple also apparently lived out the book's theme, since they "experienced plenty of hope and anxiety during the past three years as they moved between their two homes in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Calgary, Alberta."

The book is illustrated with vivid, impressionistic paintings, with just a few simple realistic shapes, combined with a carefully moody use of both color and shadows. And they merge perfectly with the story's "naturalistic" style, which follows the unfolding events during a move from a child's perspective. As they're leaving the house, his mother doesn't say anything when the father first tries to start a conversation. When she does speak, her voice is very quiet. And then her father says, "Goodbye, old house."

The little boy is seen looking out the back window of their car. ("There goes the house wehre the growling dog lived. And there goes the hole where the peptter tree blew down and never grew back...") But the book has a happy ending, since towards the end of the book, the boy meets his new next-door neighbors - two children who toss a Frisbee over the fence. And his first happy memory, the next morning, seems to be catching that Frisbee for himself.

Ultimately, the book is almost a poem that's written in prose. ("At last the new house is full of boxes and furniture, and the aquarium that used to have fish.") It's a very satisfying story, though it ends on a surprisingly abstract and poetic note. Instead of saying that the boy found familiarity and comfort in his new home, the book ends with the boy staring at the tiny castle in the fish tank's aquarium.

"I know that one more the aquarium will bubble quietly," the boys says in the book's last line, "and swimming through the green plants and the ceramic castle and the miniature bridge, there will be fish."

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