A Reading Vocation

This book showcases a sweet little girl's imagination and creativity and the joy she takes in applying these things to her homemade dollhouse with its mismatched family of dolls (Dad is a bear, Grandma is a Mouse, the rest are people). It's explicit about how the girl made her dollhouse, which can give children reading it ideas for their own creations. When she goes to her friend's house and sees a store-bought, "everything-matches" dollhouse, she begins to feel self conscious about her own. However, the "perfectness" of her friend's dollhouse also hedges in her friend's imagination, who is reluctant to include anything in her dolls' world that was not specifically manufactured for them.

Eventually, the friend goes to the main character's house and she ends up loving the homemade dollhouse, too, and the main character is validated. What annoyed me about this book was that there didn't seem to be any middle ground. The message seemed to be "homemade = creative" and "storebought = stifling." While I generally agree with this premise, there's no reason to shame four-year-olds as being "unimaginative" because they enjoy playing with pre-packaged toys. Also, I wanted to see some sort of "coming together" of the two different girls' play styles -- homemade furniture used to accentuate the store-bought house, for example.

And I just wrote a way longer, more critical review than I ever intended to for a sweet little picture book.