Building Our House Summary

Building Our House by Jonathan Bean
According to the Boston Globe Horn Book Award website, the winning titles must be published in the United States. The awards are chosen by an independent panel of three judges who are annually appointed by the Editor of the Horn Book. The books are recognized in the categories of fiction/poetry, picture books, and nonfiction literature.
In Building Our House, Bean creates an engaging story as well as a look into a warm family setting. A little girl narrates, and her childlike voice provides a mirror as well as some humor for the adult reader. For example, it is humorous when the child says, “When Mom and Dad are busy, I show the crew where things go.” There is a great sense of unity in the book because the text and illustrations clearly go together. The girl’s narration of the process of building a home matches the actions and the tools used to build the home. There is also a blue print on one of the pages, which gives the reader a full perspective of what the goal is of the family in the story, which is to build their home. It is also important that the illustrations highlight what the text is saying. The concept of building a home is very complex. For example, a child may
not know what certain building supplies and tools are so the pictures can really help in this aspect. The length of the text is also an appropriate length for the age group.
A social justice issue in this book is gender representation.
In society, many people believe that doing construction or working with tools or heavy machinery is a “manly” job. These types of activities are thought to be too dangerous for women in society. However, this book completely contradicts that idea. The little girl and her mother work just as hard as the father and the brother in building their new home. They are all equally involved and it does not matter who is female and who is male; everyone is working together to build the home. At every step of building their home, the entire family gets their hands dirty. The pages are filled with machines, vehicles, and many other tools and activities that are very eye catching for the
reader.
As Bean imagines the process of building the house through the perspective of his older sister, Building Our House is Jonathan Bean’s retelling of his own family’s experience, and includes an afterword with photographs from his own childhood.

Mr. Wuffle’s by David Wiesner
According to the official Caldecott Medal website, the Caldecott Medal was named in honor of nineteenth-century English illustrator Randolph Caldecott. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.
David Wiesner’s, Mr. Wuffles, is a wordless picture book about a cat named Mr. Wuffles, who does not care about toy mice or toy goldfish. Instead, he plays with a tiny toy spaceship full of aliens. He plays roughly with the spaceship, which causes these real aliens to hide behind the furnace to fix their ship. Here, they become friends with some insects and they work together against the cat. The illustrations include what look like symbols that cavemen used. The overall mood to the book is humorous and playful.
Because there are no words in this picture book, it allows the reader to talk to the child and ask what they thing is happening on each page. This encourages children to explore their imagination, which can be an overall fun and creative experience. The wordlessness also allows for a good pace because the child can spend as little or as much time on the book as they please. Because the illustrations are all the reader has to determine the meaning, the illustrations become much more important. For example, the cave paintings and the visual interaction between the aliens and the insects show what it looks like for friends to work together towards a common goal. The facial expressions on the character’s faces are also very animated which contributes to great visual storytelling and unity. The pictures are also very bright, vivacious, and clearly planned out, which adds to the humorous and fun mood. The pictures gives the reader understanding of what the cat was doing, and how he was feeling. Additionally, the comic strips clearly show what the aliens and the insects were planning and also how they were feeling. The book is an appropriate length and gives just enough detail in the illustrations to portray what is going on, while still allowing the reader to use some imagination.
The social justice issue in this book is stereotyping. Stereotyping is defined as an unfair or untrue belief that many people have about all people or things with a particular characteristic. In the case of Mr. Wuffles, he was a cat who was different from a typical cat. A typical cat is believed to like playing with toy mice, yarn, and other typical “cat toys.” Mr. Wuffles also seemed to be lazy and somewhat dumb to his owner because he seemed to just be staring at the toy spaceship all the time. However, Mr. Wuffles was actually amused by things other than typical cat toys, such as this real life miniature space ship with real aliens inside of it. In other words, it is unfair to stereotype all cat into having the same characteristic. This lesson applies to people as well, because although many different races, ethnicities, etc. exist, everyone is human and is special in their own way. Through this book, children can learn a good lesson about stereotyping and what it means to not judge a book by its cover.