The House by the Lake: The True Story of a House, Its History, and the Four Families Who Made It Home by Thomas Harding (review)

In this picture book rendition of Harding's 2015 adult memoir, a house near Berlin, built in the twentieth century, becomes home to four families over the years. Its residents include a "kind doctor and his cheery wife" and their four kids, who are all forced to leave, a musical family with two blond boys who love marching tunes and flee when their father is conscripted, a couple escaping bombing in the city only to leave when fighting approaches, and a "man with a fluffy hat" who after the war fixes up the house for his family and spies on his neighbors. Eventually a young man (the author) comes to the house, fixes it up, and researches its history. Smudgy mixed-media art has a delicate collage feel, handling figures by providing only impressions of features that lend anonymity to the book's characters—they could stand in for anyone who farms or sings. Faded colors give the pages a subdued vintage flavor that easily lets viewers slide into the past. The book's sophisticated approach leaves it to viewers to pick up the history here, ranging from the persecution of the Jewish family to the erection of the Berlin Wall and the patriarch's post-war spying for the secret police; the book will therefore work best with some adult context that doesn't wait until the concluding notes to explain that the first family was evicted for being Jewish, the second family had kids in the Hitler Youth, the third couple were Jews fleeing war, and the last home to headed by a Stasi spy. Nonetheless, the house setting that brings them together is an interesting and useful lens for learning more about the day-to-day lives of people from this historical era, and this title could be an interesting partner to Karas' As an Oak Tree Grows (12/14).