By Frank Asch
The moving van is loaded, the rooms are empty, and Baby Bear goes back inside to say goodbye to the house one room at a time.
Everything is packed. The furniture is gone, the van is full, and the family is climbing into the car to drive to the new house. Then Baby Bear says he forgot something inside, and goes back into the empty house alone. His parents follow. As they stand in the bare rooms, they start remembering out loud, the kitchen where they ate, the corner where the bed used to be, and for a moment the memories fill the house back up, warm and whole. Then the memory-pictures fade and the rooms are empty again. So Papa Bear carries Baby Bear from room to room and they say goodbye to each one, out loud, together. What Baby Bear learns is the quiet thing at the heart of the book: you don't leave the memories behind. You take them with you.
Most moving books point forward, at the exciting new house, the new room, the fresh start. This one stops and lets a child feel the leaving first. It gives words to something a small child feels but can't name, that an empty house is strange and a little sad, that a place you loved deserves a goodbye. And it hands them the exact comfort they need: the house is empty but the memories aren't gone, they're coming along in the car. For a child on the edge of a move, that's a gentle, true thing to hold.