Where the Heart Is: Home by Carson Ellis

SOME HOMES ARE BOATS.
SOME HOMES ARE WIGWAMS.
SOME ARE PALACES.
AND SOME ARE UNDERGROUND LAIRS.

What is a home?

"...where you hang your hat?"

"...where love abides?
And friendship is a guest?"

"... where, when you have to go there,
... they have to take you in?"

... where the heart is?"

"... where the deer and the antelope play?"

What and where a home can be is the premise of Carson Ellis' Home (Candlewick Press, 2015). It can be a clapboard cabin in the country... A houseboat on the river... a snail's shell on the shore. It can be where your treasure is, or where babushka (grandmother) lives. It can be a high-rise apartment house or the hightop shoe where that famous old lady with all the children resides. Ellis's elegant paintings show homes that range from the rural to picturesque Parisian suburbs, from a legendary undersea Atlantis to spacey Moonsian mansions on our own earth's satellite. Ellis even reveals the place where her heart is, her own art studio.

Done with a controlled palette and light line, Ellis' art catches the eye and invites the reader to stay a while and enjoy the view. Great for that primary grade social studies unit on homes and a delight for the study of the wonders of worldwide architecture, this one is a new classic. Says Booklist, "Arrestingly illustrated... Ellis, in her picture-book debut, draws with simplicity and precision, yet there are often so many fanciful details that second and third looks will come naturally."