Picture Book Review: My House by Brenda & Vicki Harding

My House by Brenda & Vicki Harding is a picture book for four or five year olds. It's short, and quite small, with short sentences accompanying the pictures.

The storyline is more of an ‘about me and my family’ than a progressive plot. It is short and uncomplicated, but with enough variables to be suited to the older end of the 0-6 range. In it, the little girl describes her pets (two dogs and a cat), and how they interact. It opens with a page about her two mothers, presented matter of factly, and then ignored for the rest of the book.

The illustrations are bright and colourful and easy to understand, but crude, although this may be an adult eye. There are enough details to hook a child in, without them being over complicated.

I wouldn’t consider it a literary great, just a nice filler book to help a child on the way to literacy, that is both identifiable and educational. It is part of a series, which follows the little girl along. It's also one of the very few LGBT picture books available in New Zealand. It is part of series, which follows the same characters through various minor events (such as getting a dog).

This book is pretty hard to find outside of New Zealand. You can keep an eye on Amazon, but otherwise, here are the full details:  Harding, B. & Harding, V. (2002). My house (C. Bray-Cotton, Illustrator).  Beaconsfield, N.S.W.: Bulldog Books.

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