Be It Ever So Humble...: Homes (Picture This) by Judith Nouvian; translated by Vali Tamm

VILLAGE WEAVER BIRDS LIVE IN A VILLAGE OF HANGING NESTS.

THEY LIKE TO HANG OUT TOGETHER!

Lots of animals like to hang together!

Bees build wax hives--with hexagonal cells that can be used as nurseries for all the babies or as pantries filled with sweet provender.

Sand martins tunnel out their penthouse apartments side by side in the faces of steep cliffs. It's a quick commute to work!

And sociable weaver birds work together to build treetop haystack apartments where they have up to five-hundred friends to hang out with.

But some animals go for single-family houses--from the osprey couple who go it alone in their messy stick-built homes, to the baby bagworm caterpillar who secretes silk and pulls in bits and pieces from the branch for the cocoon where he hangs out until he emerges as a moth. Desert fennec foxes don't need company for warmth, so they dig a solitary burrow below ground to keep cool. And talk about giving the neighbors the cold shoulder! A polar bear moms digs a den down into the ice and snow before her baby is born.

Some animals really work at constructing their homes. Paper wasps have to chew up a lot of dry wood to form their oblong nests. Beavers work (like beavers) all summer to build and stock provender for their underwater winter homes. Bowerbirds scour their landscapes for anything blue to decorate their home--flowers, trash, whatever, so long it is the right hue of blue!  And the industrious little weaver ant spins twigs and leaves together with its own silk to form elegant nests in the trees.

And then there are the squatters. The clownfish has an symbiotic understanding with his landlord, the sea anemone.Don't taze me, bro!

WHICH ANIMAL DOESN'T NEED TO BUILD A HOME?

A TURTLE!

WHEREVER IT GOES, ITS HOME GOES TOO!

Animals have as varied an idea of where to hang their hats as we humans do, as we see in Judith Nouvian's fascinating new picture essay, Homes (Picture This) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015).  Up close and personal photos show these animal homes in detail, from beautiful, sparkling-with-dew spider webs to unsightly but functional beaver dam lodges. A concept book that fits right in with primary units and a nature study that reveals the unlimited variations in animal behaviors for young learners, this is a must-have for the shelves of libraries and early childhood education classrooms.

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."