A New Home

PreS-Gr 1–Loaded down with lexical and comprehension activities at the back, this controlled vocabulary title offers both reading practice and, for anxious younger children, a reassuring step-by-step preview of an idealized moving experience. In the accompanying posed color photographs, ethnically, if not structurally, diverse young families are shown loading and then unloading a moving van with boxes and furniture, beginning to unpack, meeting neighboring families, and exploring leafy new places to walk and play. The exclusively suburban scenes are brightly lit, homes on view are clean and new looking, and, except for one realistically skeptical toddler, everyone is smiling throughout. Likewise, the only break in the narrative’s positive tone is an acknowledgement that it “can be hard to leave your old home,” accompanied by a picture of a child with her arms suggestively full of comfort plushies.