The Little House

Growing up, Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House was one of my favorite books. I’m not sure if it’s the book itself, or just the memories of my mother reading this book to me while I was curled up in her lap that makes me enjoy it so much now. Reading it again as a 21-year-old, I found myself appreciating the simple, almost child-like pictures, the language, and how the text was arranged on the page. I was amazed again and again at the beautiful phrases and words Burton uses to tell the story of the house. The language and pictures work together to establish the story from the beginning of the book. Burton is able to integrate the text and illustrations into this story about a house in the countryside, uniquely told from the point-of-view of the house. A city grows up around the Little House, bringing with it bustling people, tall buildings, and dirt. At the end of the story, the house is moved once again to the country. I am always reminded of this story whenever I see two houses in Williamsburg that are currently in the process of being moved. I wonder what their stories are—why were they moved? Where did they come from? Were they happy where they were?

Burton chooses to use both child-like language and pictures to tell the story. The simplicity of both the language and illustrations allows readers, young and old alike, to be drawn into the story. The opening sentence is “Once upon a time there was a Little House way out in the country”; this is just one of many examples of the simplistic language. The pictures are all simplistic and show the house sitting on the hill in the various seasons and at different times.

The illustrations are my absolute favorite aspect of this book. The house appears in the same place in virtually all of the pictures. This is done to draw the reader’s attention to the changes taking place in the surroundings. First, the surroundings are the same except for the changing seasons; later, the city begins to grow up around the house, changing the landscape. In this way, the pictures help tell the story of the Little House. It is interesting to note that while the house appears in virtually the same place in every picture, its color changes to represent the crowding of the city and its feelings. It starts out as pink and slowly changes to brown and then fades to tan until the great-great-granddaughter of the man who built the house finds it and moves it back to the country. The text almost always appears on the left page, and the illustrations appear on the right page. Often an aspect of the illustration is carried from the picture over to the text page. For example, on the pages with the line “She watched the sun rise in the morning and she watched the sun set in the evening”, pictures of a sun start at the bottom left of the two pages and travel across the page to show the rising and setting of the sun. In this way the text and illustrations are integrated.

Burton chose to have the placement of the text help tell the story as well. When she talks about the leaves changing colors and falling from the trees during the fall, the text is arranged so as to remind the reader of falling leaves. As the house is invaded more and more by the city, the text on the page seems to represent this invasion. There are only three instances of text appearing on the page with the illustration. The first instance is the last page that describes how unhappy the Little House is due to the crowding of the city. The text on the page with the illustration accompanying this is arranged so as to show the crowding of the city. It is located in the space below where the house sits. The second and third instances of text being located on the same page as the illustration occur on the two last pages of the book. This is done perhaps to bring the story full-circle and help tell the reader that the house is once again happy.

The house in the story is talked about as if it is a living person; for example “One day the Little House was surprised to see a horseless carriage coming down the winding country road….” (14). Burton refers to the house with a female personal pronoun, saying things like “As the Little House settled down on her new foundation, she smiled happily” (38). This allows the reader to sympathize with the house more as a character than merely as an object or setting. Additionally, Burton chose to capitalize the words “Little House” in order to make it more like a name and more human-like. The family is mentioned at both the beginning and end of the story to frame it, but other than that the house is really the only character present throughout the story.

Edit: Feburary 11, 2007
I looked at this book a second time the other day and noticed something else about the pictures that I didn't originally include in my post. In addition to being talked about as a living person, the house is drawn with human qualities. It looks like a face. If you look at the house when it is in the country at the beginning and end of the book, it appears to be smiling. Looking at it when it is in the city, it appears to be frowning. The frowning gets more and more severe as the house becomes more and more distressed. I just thought this was worth adding to my original post.