The House on the Hill

The House on the Hill

Christin Couture 1991

Christin Couture once again taps into childrens' natural curiosity and desire to discover the world around them.  Our other book of hers was about a band of kids delving into nature.  This one is about an empty old house on the hill just begging to be explored.

This could easily be a spooky story, but instead there's a sweetness to how the children wander through the rooms, marveling and enjoying each space.  My grandma in upstate New York told me that when she was a little girl there was an abandoned house (the old woman who lived there had died and the house sat empty but still furnished with all of her things).  My grandma would often go there to play and have tea parties with the dishes, always cleaning up and putting things away afterwards.  What a dream to find a place like this as a kid!

The insides of houses and rooms are some of my favorite illustrations and these are done beautifully (I actually thought they were Barbara Cooney at first glance)!

Find more books about houses here!

The Little Blue Cottage

The Little Blue Cottage

Kelly Jordan

illustrated by Jessica Courtney-Tickle 2020

 How I would love to have a summer cottage on the water!  Especially one as sweet as the one pictured by Jessica Courtney-Tickle.  This story is about a little girl who visits her family's cottage every summer, closing it up and leaving it when autumn comes.  Summer after summer she grows up looking out over the water, swimming, fishing, and spending time with her parents.  Soon the cottage is left to itself and falls into disrepair.  But guess who comes back to it, all grown up and with her own family now?

I LOVE this window seat!

A House That Once Was

 

A House That Once Was

Julie Fogliano

illustrated by Lane Smith

Another story that appeals to my love of exploring abandoned houses!  This story could have been about my friend Margaux and me.  Climbing in windows, finding houses left with the remnants of the lives that lived there and us imagining who they were.   

This part about the house struck me as so beautiful:  

Or maybe it loves to just sit and remember 

stories of someone who we'll never know.

And maybe it likes it out there in the forest

with the trees coming in where the roof used to go.

 

The Hidden House

I love when books come in the mail!  And today brought a particularly sweet one.  In this story, with detailed illustrations, a lonely old man makes some wooden dolls to keep him company.  But when he is gone and the house becomes neglected they're left alone waiting patiently on the windowsill as nature moves in.  A really lovely pairing of story and pictures.

The Hidden House

Martin Waddell 1997

illustrated by Angela Barrett

Abandoned Houses

 I love to poke around old abandoned properties.  We've climbed in through windows or basement doors, inched across rotting floors, crept quietly around dusty, empty rooms.  Abandoned houses all smell like mold, damp earth, and animals.  Sometimes a houses' past lives are left behind.  Books, photographs, birthday cards, furniture, letters, dishes in the sink- it can feel like stepping back in time.  I love the remnants and the buildings themselves- some as old as the 18th century- but also the nature that surrounds them.

One house (Madeleine called it the "shoe house" because we kept finding old shoes around the back yard) was surrounded by stinging nettles and a large Plane tree leaned on the porch.  Ivy crept through windows and moss grew below the fallen roof.  There's something so beautiful about such dilapidation.

This book describes perfectly what happens to a "ruined house", left on its own and how nature claims it.

A Ruined House

Mick Manning 1994

 The first page says, "This is my favorite house.  I like it because it has gone to rack and ruin."  Yes!

It goes on to describe how you get to the house (you climb a fence into what used to be the garden) and the wild plants that have taken over.

And how the house slowly became what it did... First the rain dripped down the chimney.  Everything turned damp.  Fungus spread over the woodwork and all the rooms began to smell of mould.  Insects moved in, and ferns sprouted from cracks in the stone.  The weather broke through the windows.  The plaster and the floorboards rotted away, and slowly the house began a new life.

This is what I do- wonder about who lived in these houses, collect the leftover bits, piece together stories.

Peeking in.

I brought home a raccoon skull found in the basement of this old house.  The building is demolished now.

An empty attic

House Held Up By Trees

Ted Kooser

illustrated by Jon Klassen 2012

And then there is this book.  So beautiful and lyrical in its story of the life of a house.  Once built and lived in and loved.  But time and life march on and roofs fall in.