From Publishers Weekly
It's not just the walls that talk in Thermes's first children's book it's the entire house. "I watch the world pass by," muses the narrator, an 18th-century dwelling that has survived to the present day, "and sometimes think about the way things were when I was first built." A series of comparisons follow in which the house points out the advantages of sanitation and central heating, while also waxing poetic about the simplicity and the quiet of bygone days. In one scene of the house's present-day owners, a harried and caffeine-fueled mother deals with a fax machine, portable phone, computer and answering machine while her children dance to a portable CD player; on the opposing page, a considerably calmer gentleman writes with a quill. On another spread, the text notes that nowadays electricity "light[s] up the night with noise and chatter," in direct contrast to the original owners, 300 years ago, gathered cozily around the hearth, "talking or reading or telling stories, their faces aglow in the flickering candles." Thermes's crisp ink line and austere draftsmanship lend her pictures an elegant airiness. An attractive palette of homey colors green, brick, gold imbues them with a sense of both history and domesticity. Ages 4-7.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
K-Gr 3-A charming, if not exactly original, idea in which a house is given a voice and persona to compare life in the days when it was built and the Fairchilds resided there to life today with the Gray family. The text progresses nicely in its comparisons, starting with the land and how empty it was, then showing the way the house was built and heated, compared with construction techniques today. The Fairchilds are pictured as a pioneer family, with the mother leaning over an open hearth to cook, spinning wool at a spinning wheel, and dressed in simple Colonial dress, although it's not clear when the house was built, other than to say it was "a long time ago." Contrasts are made in the way the two families obtain food, eat, cook, communicate, and travel, without any judgments made as to which is necessarily better. Childlike watercolors, imbued with a yellow or orange glow in many spreads, have lots of detail. Although lacking any real plot, this book is sure to appeal to the many children who wonder how things were "a long time ago" and who will be fascinated with both the differences and similarities.
Jane Marino, Scarsdale Public Library, NY
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
