cover image A Home Again

A Home Again

Colleen Rowan Kosinski, illus. by Valeria Docampo. Two Lions, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-5420-0720-7

This quiet tale by Kosinski opens on a newly constructed house—the book’s narrator—welcoming a pale-skinned family of four, one a pregnant adult, and savoring how they grow over the years. “I treasured the sound of laughter echoing down my hall./ My family loved me. And I loved my family.” But eventually the family puts the home on the market, leaving it forlorn and stubbornly refusing to let anyone else in. That is, until an interracial gay couple takes on the fixer-upper and, despite the home’s initial reluctance, fills its halls with cheer. Sleekly rendered acrylic and colored pencil art by Docampo casts the house’s interior in rich chiaroscuro, focusing less on the hazy-faced humans and more on architectural spreads in this familiar narrative of being left behind and learning to love again. Ages 3–7. Author's agent: Isabel Atherton, Creative Authors. Illustrator’s agent: Mela Bolinao, MB Artists. (Nov.)