Work record

The Little House

Virginia Lee Burton

1942 · Early 20th Century · Novella · English

Abstract

Written: 1942
Setting: Several generations, from horse-and-buggy days to the age of skyscrapers and subways; A small hill in the American countryside, gradually engulfed by a city, and finally another country hill
Author: Virginia Lee Burton
Country: United States
Language: English
Genre: Picture book (illustrated story for young children)
Form: Picture book of about 40 pages, with full-colour illustrations by the author and curving lines of text
Recommended: Grades K–2

Background. Burton drew on her own Gloucester home, which had been shifted from the roadside into a meadow, and on the spread of roads, suburbs and transit lines in the Massachusetts of her day.

Plot. Planted on a hilltop by a man determined to keep her in the family, a modest dwelling sees farm life cycle through the year while far-off lights glow at night. Over many years pavement, filling stations, apartment blocks, streetcars, raised and underground railways and towers rise around her until she is forgotten and dilapidated. A woman descended from the builder knows her by the family stories and arranges for her to travel by truck to open country.

Form. The heroine holds nearly the same position on page after page, so that change is read in the surroundings; text is laid out in shaped lines that mirror the curves of hills, roads and sky.

Themes. Time measured by sun, moon and season; continuity across generations; the loss of quiet and open sky; restoration and return to the kind of place a thing was made for.

Significance. Winner of the 1943 Caldecott Medal and filmed by Disney a decade later, it is among the most widely read American picture books and a common first lesson in how places change over time.

Main characters

The Little House: Sturdy country dwelling, personified as she, who observes decades pass
The builder: Her maker, who forbids that she ever be sold
The great-great-granddaughter: His descendant, who finds her in the city and moves her
The movers: Crew who lift the house onto a truck and carry her away

Summary

The Little House is a picture book about a small pink house built by a man on a little hill far out in the country. He builds her strong and declares that she must never be sold, so that his descendants many generations on can live in her. From her hilltop the Little House watches the sun come up and go down, the moon wax and wane, and the seasons turn: apple blossoms and daisies in spring, children swimming in the pond in summer, harvest and falling leaves in autumn, sledding and skating in winter. At night she sees the lights of a distant city and wonders what living there would be like. Gradually the city comes to her. A horseless carriage appears on the dirt road; surveyors and steam shovels cut a wide paved road in front of her; gas stations, roadside stands and small houses fill the fields. Then come bigger houses, apartment buildings and tenements, trolley cars, an elevated train overhead and a subway beneath, and at last tall buildings on either side. The Little House, empty, shabby and with broken windows, can no longer see the stars or tell the seasons apart, since everyone in the city hurries the same in every month. One spring day the great-great-granddaughter of the builder passes and recognizes her. Movers raise the house onto a truck and carry her out of the city to a small hill in the country, where she is set down among apple trees, mended and painted, lived in again, and able once more to watch the sun, moon and seasons. Burton's pictures keep the house at the same place on nearly every spread while the world changes around her, and lines of text curve along with the drawings. Houghton Mifflin published the book in 1942, and it won the Caldecott Medal in 1943. Walt Disney released an animated short based on it in 1952.

Virtues in this work

Piety: The builder's great-great-granddaughter honours her ancestor by rescuing the house he built and keeping his rule that it never be sold.
Fortitude: The Little House stays standing through decades of digging, traffic and trains because she was built strong and well.
Hope: Even surrounded by tall buildings, the shabby house keeps longing for the country, and her longing is answered when she is moved to a new hill.

Plot or Argument

The house on the hill
A builder sets the strong Little House on a country hill and declares she must never be sold, so that his far-off descendants may live in her.
Days, months and seasons
The house watches the sun's daily path, the changing moon, and a full round of country seasons, and wonders about the lights of the city on the horizon.
The road arrives
A horseless carriage, then surveyors and steam shovels, bring a paved road, traffic, gas stations, roadside stands and rows of small houses.
The city surrounds her
Apartments, tenements, trolleys, an elevated train, a subway and tall buildings close in; the empty house grows shabby and can no longer see the sky clearly.
Rescue and return
The builder's great-great-granddaughter recognizes the house, has her moved out of the city by truck to a new hill in the country, and restores her.

Characters

The Little House, protagonist
A small, sturdy country house, called she, who watches the world change around her and longs for the country.
The builder, maker
The man who builds the house well and rules that she must never be sold.
The great-great-granddaughter, rescuer
The builder's descendant who recognizes the house in the city and has her moved back to the country.
The children of the country, neighbors
Children who pick apples, swim in the pond and skate and sled near the house in the early seasons.
The road and building crews, agents of change
Surveyors, steam-shovel operators and workmen who bring the road and the city, and later the movers who carry the house away.

Lessons

Time passes in patterns
The Little House sees the same patterns again and again: sunrise and sunset, the moon's changes, spring, summer, fall and winter. Burton uses these to show young children how days make months and months make years, and how one house can stand through generations.
- What does the Little House see in the spring? In the winter?
- How does the book show a whole day going by on one page?
- What changes in your neighborhood when the seasons change?
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- Why can't the Little House see the moon and stars anymore?
- Is the city in the book a bad place, or just the wrong place for the Little House?
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The builder's promise is kept many generations later by a great-great-granddaughter who remembers the family stories. The book teaches that we can honor the people before us by caring for what they built and handed down.
- How does the great-great-granddaughter know which house it is?
- What does she do to make the Little House happy again?
- Is there something old in your family that someone has kept safe?
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Context

The book was made in the early 1940s, when American towns were spreading into farmland along new paved roads and older city neighborhoods were being rebuilt with apartment blocks, elevated railways, subways and skyscrapers. Burton's own home at Folly Cove in Gloucester, Massachusetts, a small house she and her husband moved from the street to a field, gave her the idea; she later said she meant the book to show young children the passing of time rather than to argue against cities.

Composition

Burton wrote and illustrated the book, designing each double spread so the house stays near the center of the page while the scenery changes, and setting the text in shaped lines that echo the pictures. Houghton Mifflin, her regular publisher, issued it in Boston in 1942.

Reception

The Little House won the 1943 Caldecott Medal from the American Library Association for the most distinguished American picture book of the year. It has remained continuously in print, was adapted as a Walt Disney animated short in 1952, and has appeared in National Education Association and School Library Journal lists of the best books for children.

Home Exile Nature / Landscape Technology Modernity Memory / Time Family Childhood

Comparisons

mike-mulligan-and-his-steam-shovel
Burton's earlier book celebrates a steam shovel digging a cellar; in The Little House the same kind of machine cuts the road that brings the city, showing the author's double view of machinery and progress.
make-way-for-ducklings
Another Caldecott-winning Boston picture book of the early 1940s in which small creatures must find a home amid city traffic, though McCloskey's ducks settle happily in the Public Garden.
little-house-in-the-big-woods
Wilder's family lives in a cabin where the woods stretch for miles; both books measure time by the round of country seasons and treasure the security of a small home.
walden
Thoreau's chapters on the seasons and his complaint about the railroad passing Walden Pond are an adult counterpart to a house that watches the seasons until the trains arrive.
the-velveteen-rabbit
Both picture books give feelings to a made thing that is worn down and nearly discarded, and both end with that thing given a new life through love.

Quotes

“Once upon a time there was a Little House way out in the country. She was a pretty Little House and she was strong and well built.”

— Virginia Lee Burton, The Little House, Opening lines (1942 first edition; copyrighted).

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For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

Where the Little House sits on each page, and how the world around her changes.
The face the house seems to have in her windows and door, and when it looks happy or sad.
The lights of the city at night, far away at first and then all around her.
The first horseless carriage on the dirt road.
How the city pages show the seasons, and why they all look alike.

Key terms and names

Country: Open land with fields, hills, orchards and a pond, where the Little House is built.
Horseless carriage: An old name for an automobile; one comes down the road and starts the changes.
Steam shovel: A big digging machine that cuts the hill to make the wide road in front of the Little House.
Elevated train: A train that runs on tracks raised above the street; one rumbles past the Little House.
Great-great-granddaughter: A child's child's child's child; the builder's great-great-granddaughter is the one who rescues the house.

Seminar Questions

Comprehension What did the man who built the Little House say must never happen to her?
Comprehension What things did the Little House like to watch from her hill?
Comprehension How did the Little House get back to the country?
Interpretation Why was the Little House sad in the city, even though there was so much going on around her?
Interpretation Why do you think nobody lived in the Little House when the city was all around her?
Interpretation The Little House wondered what the city would be like. Was it what she expected?
Big Question What makes a place feel like home?

Faith Connections

Genesis 8:22 (Scripture)
God promises Noah that seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. The Little House watches that promised rhythm on her hill and misses it in the city.
Psalm 104:19-23 (Scripture)
The psalmist praises God for the moon that marks the seasons and the sun that knows its going down, and for people going out to their work until evening, the very sights the Little House loves.
Ecclesiastes 1:4 (Scripture)
One generation passes away and another comes, but the earth abides. The house outlasts her builder and is cared for by his great-great-granddaughter.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: A house built well, in a place where it can see the sky and the seasons, is happy and lived in. As the city crowds in, the house loses the sky, the seasons and her family, and falls into neglect. Therefore when the builder's descendant restores her to a country hill, the house is herself again.

Rhetorical device: personification. Burton draws the windows and door like a face and calls the house she, so that children feel her curiosity about the city lights and her sadness among the skyscrapers.

Debate: Resolved: that the Little House was right to want to leave the city.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Tell three things that came to the Little House's hill, in the order they came, and say how each one changed her life.

Comparison with Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel: In Mike Mulligan, the steam shovel is the hero. In The Little House, steam shovels help bring the city. Compare how Burton shows machines in the two books.

Creative Prompts

Classroom
Fold a paper into four parts and draw the Little House in spring, summer, fall and winter, keeping the house in the same spot each time as Burton does.
Classroom
Make a time line strip showing, in order, everything that came to the Little House's hill: the car, the road, the houses, the trains and the tall buildings.
Fiction
Tell the story of your own house or apartment as if the house were talking. What has it seen?
Dialogue
Act out the great-great-granddaughter talking with the movers as they lift the Little House onto the truck.