YOUR HOUSE IS NOT JUST A HOUSE

In this rhyming ode to imagination, a young child moves through the house envisioning fantastical purposes for ordinary objects.

After returning home during a rainstorm, an energetic, brown-skinned child conquers boredom by imagining a series of thrilling scenarios, from teleporting to a planet of robots and cavorting with jungle animals to taking the stage as a musical phenom. By the time the rain has passed, the child has invented a new sport and begins drawing colossal battles with sidewalk chalk (Vikings vs. Martians, anyone?). Artwork created with cut paper and paint sometimes differentiates the imaginative play from reality, as with the transparent, steamy animals that emerge from the child’s bath. At other times, the flights of fancy appear as real as the typical household objects, such as when the kid tumbles across the couch like a professional wrestler defeating a robot opponent. The text also slips back and forth between real and unreal to celebrate all kinds of inventiveness, equating the child’s fantasies with the creative endeavors of the grown-ups, including dancing, painting, and writing. Slant rhymes and trips in the scansion will frustrate some readers; those who commit to the text with the same cheerful abandon as the protagonist will enjoy the reading experience anyway.

An exuberant paean to creativity.