Your House, My House
by Marianne Dubuc; illus. by the author; trans. from French by Yvette Ghione
Preschool, Primary    Kids Can    24 pp.    g
10/20    978-1-5253-0490-3    $18.99
e-book ed.  978-1-5253-0573-3    $9.99

“It’s the start of a new day at 3 Maple Street. But not just any day — it’s Little Rabbit’s birthday!” Dubuc’s straightforward text chronicles the hustle and bustle of the Rabbit family’s preparations for Little Rabbit’s party in their first-floor apartment. Youngsters can follow the Rabbits’ activities in the clever cutaway illustration of the entire building on every spread, which means viewers are also treated to a peek inside six other apartments (plus an attic) and myriad intersecting visual story lines. Little Hedgehog is looking forward to his papa returning from a trip; Mr. Bear wakes up sick; Little Fox’s family welcomes a new baby; the Cat family moves in on the third floor; and the Mouse triplets are causing chaos in their bedroom right below the apartment of Mr. Owl, who is having trouble sleeping as a result. But this delightful French import’s detailed illustrations don’t stop there — look for the bird family in a tree, a ghost in the attic, a house gnome, and more, including several fairy-tale references (most notably, a girl with yellow hair who climbs a ladder into the Fox family’s apartment for a snack and a snooze while they’re at the hospital — sound familiar?). Best-suited to one-on-one sharing or solitary perusal to catch all the minute action, this Richard Scarry–esque book, with its expressive and appealingly drawn animal characters, begs to be read multiple times.

From the January/February 2021 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.