Home is a wish

A young protagonist reflects on time away (an ordinary day's rhythm, a short trip with Mama, a longer trip with Amah), noting that "we always come back home." Then a moving van appears. The East Asian--cued family packs up their possessions, flies through sunset-hued skies, and drives at night to a new city. From a balcony overlooking the metropolitan bustle, the child wonders, "How can this be our home?" Avian motifs echo the narrative theme--side panels depict an adult tern guarding an egg and feeding a young chick, and terns also accompany the family's plane through the sky. Kuo's vivid color shifts--shadowy blues giving way to bright blue skies--herald the child's gradual acceptance of a new home in this pensive tale of relocation that centers the melancholy as well as the optimism of change. Background characters are portrayed with various skin tones. Ages 3--6. (Feb.)

A child who moves overseas grapples with what home is. The young unnamed East Asian--presenting narrator explains home in basic terms: "In the mornings we leave home, and in the evenings we return." Sometimes the family members--consisting of the little one, Mama, and Amah (Taiwanese forGrandmother)--go away for a longer time, but they always come back…until one day, they leave for good. As their plane flies across the ocean, "home becomes a wish." They arrive in a strange new place with unfamiliar people and sounds. "How can this be our home?" the protagonist asks. Kuo's spare yet graceful prose and her signature graphic-style artwork, beautifully saturated with pinks and blues, imbue this simple story with heft. One particularly moving double-page spread depicts the narrator in a canoe on a vast sea rowing away from the family's old apartment building on one side toward their new house on the other. And then, "slowly, odd becomes ordinary, and strange becomes sweet." The child comes to some profound realizations: "There are different homes for different times: a home from before, a home for now, even a home for later." A close reading into the landscapes (Seattle's Space Needle can be seen in one spread) and clues such as the use of Taiwanese show just how far this family has come. Elegantly constructed yet warmly comforting--a soothing balm for children undergoing similar changes.(Picture book. 4-8) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.