I recently got to meet Phoebe Wahl at the 2026 Children’s Literature Conference here in Bellingham, Washington. The conference was a blast–more on that later–and the presenters were very impressive. Phoebe was one of them, and one thing she talked about when discussing her work was her 2020 picture book The Blue House.
This book feels at once very old and very modern. It is very old because the focus is familiar: family, house, and related crafts and gardening. The story, though, is modern: a family who love the house they rent–their home–and have to deal with the pain of the landlord forcing them to move out so he could tear it down. Leo, the little boy who is the main character, first resists, then gets hungry, then goes along with the packing up and the move.
The new house is empty, even hollow, until Leo and his dad start the process of turning it into a home by painting on the walls. After they see the gaping hole where their old blue house used to be, Leo has the idea of painting the blue house on the wall of their new home, and this “made them both feel a little more at home.”
Bellingham–where I live, and where Phoebe lives–is going through growing pains, and many families are going through similar pains related to their homes. I sighed in recognition when I read this, and really felt for Leo. In a way, this felt like an echo of Virginia Lee Burton’s 1942 The Little House, which is also about homes, growth, and change.
It’s also nice in how it shows generations working together to deal with change, and with emotional pain.
