The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton tells the life story of a house and a great lesson about how sometimes we do not realize what we have until it is gone.
The little house in this story is built on a hill in a remote countryside and has a happy existence. However, change happens all around the house as progress happens in the world around. Horse and buggies become cars and trucks, country roads become highways and streets. The little house watches everything change until she lives in a bustling, fast paced city, instead of a quiet country lane. The house is abandoned and becomes broken and worn with no one to care for it. The house is sad and lonely.
One day, the great-great-granddaughter of the man who built the little house comes and moves the house back to a quiet country hilltop like the one where it originally stood and the little house returns to being happy and content.
Impressions
This book is such a timeless treasure with words and pictures that have stood the test of time for more than 70 years, much like the little house itself. Although the story could be viewed as simple, this book packs in a lot of deeper meaning. Themes of happiness, change, history, and contentment emerge as we see the house stand by in the center of the story as a fixed mark for the world around.
The beautiful illustrations tell the story in great detail and add depth and convey the feeling of the passage of time. The sun rises across one page at the beginning of the story and there is even a lunar calendar featured on another. Seasons change and the colors and lines reflect the changes along with the text. The gradual change of expression on the “face” of the house is the subtle thread that runs through the story. At the beginning of the book, Burton’s house looks happy with windows that serve as bright eyes and front steps that are curved like a smile. Over time, as the city closes in around the little house, the windows darken and the steps wear down into a thin, straight line. Eventually, the steps turn down into a frown and broken windows and a boarded up door show that the house is utterly forgotten in the big dark city.
Just when things look worst, Burton reminds readers “She looked shabby . . . though she was just as good a house as ever underneath.” This reinforces the theme that sometimes things are not what they seem and that one should never give up hope. When the house is rescued by being moved back to a countryside setting, readers are brought full circle so that the last pages are strongly reminiscent of the first and the little house has learned a lesson about being happy right where you are.
Professional Reviews
On the 60th anniversary of The Little
House, the versatile author and artist’s simple stories and guileless
art remain timeless… and in print.
A small pink house gradually loses her bucolic setting to
urban chaos until, rescued by an ancestor of her original owner, she is
happily returned to the countryside. Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House
begins with a promise, evolves into a heart-tugging drama, and closes
on a pleasing note. A simple story. A simple message. The book, which
has touched readers young and old and been revered for a dozen different
reasons, has stayed in print for six decades. In today’s fast-track
cycle from print to out-of-print, its endurance is indeed noteworthy.
Accolades for The Little House (Houghton, 1942) came early and have continued over the years. Writing in the New York Times
in 1942, reviewer Anne Eaton mentioned its “lively imagination and
genuine power”; the 1943 Caldecott committee selected it as the “most
distinguished book of the year”; librarian Anne Carroll Moore, known for
her tough criticism, praised it as a “honest-to-goodness picture book”;
and it has subsequently appeared on several “best of the century” lists.
Pulitzer Prize – winning novelist Anne Tyler, in a 1986 essay in the New York Times , said that The Little House
introduced her to “the realization of the losses that the passage of
time can bring.” As a child, she liked the book’s tone—”quiet but
rhythmic”; as an adult, the illustrations “spelled out for me all the
successive stages [of time]; the sun rises and sets across one entire
page and a whole month of moons wheel across another.”
Burton’s artwork does invite inspection: circular patterns brim with
fluidity, scenes effectively center the action, and characters clearly
suggest the emotion of the moment. Her theme—survival through change
—never intrudes on the plot, yet it is there for those who delve deeper
into the story; it is a theme that Burton returned to again and again in
her books. At the time it was published, The Little House comforted children distressed by the uncertainties of World War II. Today, as the book celebrates its 60th
anniversary, it embraces today’s youngsters, quelling their contemporary
fears and challenges. The story of The Little House, however, began long before the book’s publication and has meaningful connections to Burton’s own life.
Elleman, 2002
From what is available,this promises to
be another beguiling book in the series which includes Choo Choo and Mike
Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. Children have an instinctive personal feeling
about houses, and the idea of the friendly little house that found itself forgotten
when the city moved in on it will catch their imaginations. The pictures are in
full color an on every page. Virginia Burton has a sense of pattern that makes
her pictures almost like a tapestry.
Kirkus, 1942
Library Uses
This book could serve as a reference point for many activities including comparing rural to urban living spaces. I would use this book as an introduction, then give students magazines to find pictures of urban living spaces and rural living spaces. I would let them create a collage for each to compare/contrast, then ask them to tell which one they like most and why.
References
Burton, V. L. (2012). The little house. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children.
Elleman, B. (2002). Virginia Lee Burton: An American classic. Library Journal. Retrieved from
The little house. (1942). Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved online at https://www.kirkusreviews.com
/book-reviews/virginia-lee-burton/little-house-burton/
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