We Were Tired of Living in a House, by Liesel Moak Skorpen

This book is copyright 1969 and might be a little hard to find. However, it's well worth it if you can.

I found it at a garage sale last week and picked it up on vague memories from my childhood past. I'm not sure when I read it, but it was familiar. We're talking intense de ja vu feelings while browsing through the book in some stranger's driveway.

It's a short and simple (yet extremely imaginative!) tale of a group of siblings who think it's boring to live in just any old house and decided to explore alternatives. They live in a treehouse, in a cave and on the beach. In the end, they decide that their original home is best. But the story, like I said, is very imaginative. The illustrations are done by Doris Burn and are all black & white with red highlights. I wasn't sure what my son would think of it, because we haven't visited many books that are in black and white. However, each page had a picture of something he was familiar with (a balloon, the beach, etc) and he sat still for and interacted with the entire story.

My son is 20 months old and stayed tuned for the entire tale. Some pages are more detailed than others, but many have only a few sentences per page. If your kids are "acquinted" with bears, balloons, socks & shoes, then the chances of them liking this book are high.

This is a classic worth passing on. If you stumble across a copy, by all means pick it up! I'm so glad I did.