The House Baba Built: an artists childhood in China

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Bibliography
Young, E., & Koponen, L. (2011).The house Baba built: an artists childhood in China. New York: Little, Brown and Co. ISBN 0316076287

Plot Summary
Eddie young and his family are caught up in the chaos of Word War II. His father worried for the families safety makes a deal with a landowner to design and built an expensive house if he allows the family to live there for a period of 20 years. The land in which the young engineer has in mind resides in a safe neighborhood near the foreign embassy. The landowner agrees and Baba takes his family to live in a safer neighborhood in a house he has built for them. Despite the war the kids are joyful and happy using their imaginations within the house their father has built. As the war grows closer relatives, friends, and foreigners found shelter in the home Baba had made.

Critical Analysis
During a trip to his past home Young decides to put his memories into this work of art. Ed Young’s The House that Baba Built pays tribute to his father by telling a wonderful true tale on how he built a home in which his family and friends could be safe during the war. The characters in the story are all happy and feel protected within the home that Baba has built for them. They make the best of it and the children are oblivious to the dangers they could face. It is later revealed how Baba had built the house like a fortress ready to sustain nearby bombings of the war.

The story is lovely telling how a father went to great lengths to protect his family and even strangers. The book is an easy read and very eye catching from every direction. Young does a wonderful job in taking the reader into another time to experience his journey in the house his father had built. The cover after finishing the story and looking at the home in which Young grew up resembles the door entrance to the house. It is a wonderful piece of nonfiction children’s literature and captures the readers from start to finish. Its pictures are vibrant and alluring. Seems as if a creative child put this together. It is a mixed with drawings, collages, chalk, cut outs, watercolors, and pictures all over. The story is validated by these many things mentioned above as well as a diagram of the home and a timeline of events that occurred in the story for the reader.

Review Excerpts
  • Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature for Picture Book (2011)
  • Norman A. Sugarman Award (2012)
  • Review in GOODREADS: “This powerful, poignant, and exquisitely illustrated memoir is the story of one of our most beloved children's illustrators and the house his baba built.”
  • Review in KIRKUS: “Sophisticated, inventive art invites close viewings for patient readers in this unusual family story.”


Connections
This book would be great in discussing the repercussions of World War II. It can be integrated into the history curriculum or even can be assigned as a reflective essay as to how families were affected by the war. Other books similar to this:
Young, Ed. Beyond the Great Mountains: 

A Visual Poem about China. ISBN 0811843432

Young, Ed. Voices of the Heart. ISBN 0439456932

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