The Moving Book

PreS-Gr 1–Moving houses, like many transitions in a child’s life, can stir up powerful feelings. Brown has crafted a touching exploration of one such move as experienced by two closely connected siblings. At the story’s start, a brother sits with his apprehensive younger sister on their stoop, gently reminding her of the homes their family has occupied and of the faces, routines, and sensations that went with them: a fifth-floor walkup with endless stair-climbing, a large apartment building with door-to-door trick-or-treating in the hallways, a rowhouse with a secret passage leading to the neighbors’ backyard. From these memories, he compiles a history of their lives. Eagle-eyed readers will spot a partially obscured “SOLD” sign in the opening spread. Sure enough, Brown eventually reveals that these reminiscences have been building up to a pep talk—the family is moving again, this time to live with their beloved grandfather (who uses a walker to aid his mobility). Here, the brother’s frank reassurance takes on a soothing, poetic intimacy: “This is how the moving will go: We will put our things in boxes. Fragile things get wrapped in newspaper. Big things are tied up in blankets.” The tender ink, watercolor, and digital art neatly captures the emotions of a family navigating life’s normal complexities. While several of the illustrations are rotated sideways to show a sequence of actions across multiple floors of a building, most simply give a wide view of a single moment, allowing the eye to wander and observe the doings of background characters in playgrounds and restaurants. The text and images play particularly well off each other when the brother’s narration humorously papers over his past fears of playground slides and dinosaur exhibits with big-kid bravado, while readers can see the truth for themselves.