By Melanie Walsh
A lift-the-flap book for young children about a girl whose mom and dad live apart, so she has two homes. It sticks to the practical stuff: which bedroom, which toys, who's picking her up.
The girl telling this says it in the first line: her mom and dad don't live together anymore. Then she gets on with the details, and the details are the book. She has a bedroom at each house and they don't match, so you lift a flap and the yellow walls turn into flowered ones, and the panda nightlight turns into a string of glowing butterflies. Some toys live at Mom's. Some live at Dad's. Her favorites travel with her. Somebody different collects her from school depending on the day. Dad takes her camping; Mom takes her to a farm. When she's in the school play, both of them come and sit in the audience, separately. Melanie Walsh's pictures are flat, bright, and finger-painty, and the flaps do the work: you lift one house and the other house is underneath.
It is the most literal book of its kind, and that's what makes it useful. A lot of what a small child wants to know about two houses is practical: where's my rabbit, who's fetching me on Thursday, is there a toothbrush there, do I bring my own shoes. This book takes those questions one at a time and answers each with a picture. The flaps are doing more than entertaining, too. Lifting one room and finding another real room underneath puts the whole two-homes idea in a form a three-year-old's hands can hold. There's no sadness performed anywhere in it, and the girl's tone stays matter-of-fact from the first page to the last.