How do you feel when a multi–Caldecott Honor winner creates a Caldecott-worthy book? Personally, I go through a series of different stages. You know. Denial. Morbid curiosity. Conversion. Proselytizing. At least that’s what happened when I took a deep dive into A House That Once Was by Julie Fogliano, illustrated by Lane Smith. As you can see, I’ve made it to Stage #4, and the likelihood of my return from this vantage point is slim.

Of course, the pairing of Fogliano and Smith is unfair from the start. She’s the kind of author that gets paired with Caldecott-winning illustrators on a regular basis. Your Erin E. Steads. Your Christian Robinsons. Smith, on the other hand, is perfectly comfortable writing his own books. So much so that one gets the distinct impression he wouldn’t take a job illustrating another author’s work unless he truly believed in the project.

In the case of this particular book, Fogliano’s lyrical language somehow manages the feat of walking a tightrope between rhythmic cadences with only the occasional hat tip to rhyme. In the story, two children chance upon a house in the woods, abandoned but still containing the remnants of its previous owners. As they explore, they try to understand why the residents might have vacated. It is with their questions that Smith switches visual gears. Up until they start launching into flights of fancy, he’s been utilizing a beautiful blotted-line effect, not dissimilar to the thick textured paints he pulled out for (the also gorgeous) A Perfect Day last year. The “present day” images here, as Smith explains on the copyright page, “were made with India ink, drawn on vellum with a crow quill pen, then pressed while wet onto watercolor paper creating a blotted line effect. The colors were painted in oil over gesso then scanned and added digitally under the ink-line. The ‘imagined’ scenes were painted in oil paint on hot press board and scanned along with paper collage elements that were combined digitally.”

What’s so interesting about this choice is that it upsets your expectations. Usually when a child imagines things in a picture book, the depicted world in which they truly reside is crisp and clear, while the fantastical world of their thoughts is dreamlike. Here, it’s as if the opposite were true. The kids’ imaginings have a kind of reality and texture to them, and everything is distinct and separate from the impressionistic splotches of the real world. Meanwhile, the kids themselves, the ones telling this story, look like they’re just a sneeze away from fading into the walls that surround them. Only their dreams feel substantial.

I’ve always harbored a secret belief that Caldecotts go to the artists that are willing to change up their styles. Last year Matthew Cordell won for Wolf in the Snow when he included occasional glimpses of realism, unheard of in his previous books. The year before that, Javaka Steptoe collected pieces of wood and painted on them for the thrilling Basquiat bio Radiant Child. Lane Smith, for his part, has never been content to settle for a single, solitary style. His work in The Stinky Cheese Man is different from The Happy Hockey Family, to say nothing of Grandpa Green. What’s different about A House That Once Was is that the two different styles Smith uses in this book exist side-by-side for a distinct purpose. One has the impression that the choices he has made with his art have been deliberate, in the hopes of best pairing Fogliano’s words with art that both complements and deepens the book’s understanding of memory, loss, regret, and idle speculation. Were he to win a Caldecott for this book, it would bookend a fascinating career that began with his first Caldecott Honor win (The Stinky Cheese Man) for a book that dared to make you question the integrity of unchallenged picture-book tropes and continues with a book that also redefines tropes — but with an entirely different tone and manner. Smith seems incapable of doing a half-assed job when he believes in a project. This book may yet prove that, with increased experience, artists shouldn’t be afraid to try new things, sometimes within the pages of a single title.

[Read the Horn Book Magazine review of A House That Once Was here.]