My House Has Stars - Hardcover

McDonald, Megan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0531095290 ISBN 13: 9780531095294

Publisher: Orchard Books, 1996

Synopsis

Young people describe the different kinds of homes they live in around the world and how they see the stars.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

McDonald (Is This a House for Hermit Crab?) turns to geography here, showing vastly different houses from around the world which all have one feature in common: the "roof" of stars that hangs over them. Eight colorful, dense vignettes feature a child describing his or her home ("My house has walls made of sheep's wool and a real door in the front of the tent that squeaks like a crybaby"). The "tour" of each dwelling, be it houseboat, igloo, skyscraper, yurt, etc., concludes with a reference to the stars above; for example, a child in a pueblo says, "I see stars, like tiny handprints, where Coyote scattered the mica dust and stars were born!" Unexplained facts and referents abound, tantalizing readers but also likely to frustrate them: What is a jeepney? Why does the Weaver Princess star go to meet the Ox Boy star? Catalanotto's (Who Came Down That Road?) diffused watercolors show the children in their environments. Facing art, beneath the blocks of text, clues readers into the characters' locations: a hazy map of the world, with the child's homeland circled. The impressionistic style of the pictures suggests as much as it represents. Unfortunately, this approach exacerbates the gaps left in the vignettes. At best this is a lyrical invitation to a scavenger hunt on the reference shelf; otherwise it is essentially a cliff-hanger. Ages 5-8.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Ages 5^-8. In the framework story, a mother tells her daughter that "night is falling somewhere. And now. And now again. Night is coming to this sky. To houses everywhere. This house. / And there are stars." In the pages that follow, eight children around the world tell about their homes at night: a houseboat in the Philippines, a mud house in Nepal, a group of round huts in Ghana, a Japanese house, an adobe pueblo, a Mongolian yurt, a skyscraper apartment in Brazil, and a house on the Alaskan tundra. Each child, each culture views the night sky and the stars in a slightly different way, yet as the book's point of view pulls back visually in the last pages, it is clear that earth is home to all, and the roof above our heads is the same sky. Catalanotto's impressionistic watercolor paintings capture each culture's individuality yet maintain the same soft-focus view of the world after darkness falls. Although the scenes take place at night, each is full of light: firelight, starlight, moonlight, city lights, the northern lights, and even the light of glowing silkworms. All add to the sense of wonder created by the well-crafted words and art in this purposeful yet impressive picture book. Carolyn Phelan

About this edition

• Publisher: Orchard Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0531095290
• ISBN 13: 9780531095294
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1
• Illustrator: Catalanotto Peter