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Old House,
New House
illustrated
by Katherine Potter
Cavendish, 2009
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| From
the
book jacket: |
It's summer,
and a little girl likes moving into an
old country house with a cranberry bog, a bullfrog creek, and farm
animals that live down the road.
But when fall comes, it's time to pack up and move again--all the way
across the country to a new house in a new place with new friends and
new adventures.
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| A little
about the book: |
This, my first
autobiographical story in verse, is meant to be reassuring for those
who must move from a place they love to a new, unfamiliar place.
I think I am an expert when it comes to
moving. I moved so many times! As a child I lived in a quonset hut, a
garage, a hotel, an apartment, a basement, and a tract house. When I
grew up, moving from place to place again, I lived in California, New
Jersey, and New York--a lighthouse in summer, a beach house in winter,
a 19th century cottage in Berkeley, and a Brooklyn brownstone. When we
moved to St. Thomas, we lived in a 19th century West Indian merchant’s
villa behind Back Street, then an old-time gingerbread house on stilts,
and now, since 1987, in a cinder block house on a hilltop, and it's
been the longest time I’ve ever lived in one place, over twenty years!
I first wrote about living in the “Old
House” in junior high. We were asked to create an autobiographical
story for English class, and I got an A on mine. I wonder if that good
grade encouraged me to become a REAL writer?
Later, in the early 1970’s, my husband and I
and our two children lived for a while in a cabin without modern
conveniences, and memories of the “Old House” popped up again in my
personal New
Jersey journal. And those memories popped up yet again when I wrote
Old
House, New House.
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From
the reviews:
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"After spending the
summer in an old country house, a little girl feels bereft when her
family moves west to a new house. As the girl and her parents settle
into the rural house without plumbing, she revels in the cranberry bog,
plays with neighbor kids, picks berries, bathes in a washtub and has
the “very best summer” ever. But when summer ends and they leave, she
feels sad parting from the old house and her friends. She wonders if
she will ever see snow or find a new friend. By describing her feelings
of elation and sadness in first-person, past-tense verse, the little
girl creates a nostalgic tone that captures her idyllic memories of
that perfect summer. Potter’s softly hued chalk-pastel illustrations
spread across the pages with elegiac images of the girl drawing well
water, lying by the cranberry bog, picking blueberries, washing in a
galvanized tub and cavorting with farm animals. The satisfying and
simple verbal and visual images sustain summer memories while
anticipating life in a new place." Kirkus
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