The House in the Night- Caldecott Award Book 1

The House in the Night

By: Susan Swanson Pictures by: Beth Krommes

Genre: Picture Book

Award: Caldecott Medal

Grade Level: I consider The House in the Night to be at a kindergarten reading level. The word choice is straightforward and simple, with no more than eight words appearing on a page. Additionally, thanks to the books full circle ending, students can comprehend the message since the sequence of events in the book is repeated twice. Specific background knowledge is unnecessary in this book, and an interest in night time stories would be ideal for the student audience.

Summary: The House in the Night is an interesting tale about a sequence of events that happen in a town concerning a particular house. The book starts out by introducing the key to the house, and different objects inside that house such as a key, lights, a child, and a special book about a bird. The rising action depicts the bird from the book taking the child on an adventure through the sky to visit the sun, moon, and stars. When the bird and child return to the house the reader is reintroduced to the elements of the house in a full circle ending of the book. Krommes really utilizes illustration elements such as line and color in this book to emphasize important objects and to set the mood of the story. With a mixture of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal as well as, dark and pale lines, the reader can connect to the texture of the illustrations which give the book an element of reality. The illustrations in the text are predominately black and white with focal points of warm yellow to emphasize the text of the book.

Classroom Strategies:

To reinforce plot themes in the book and to expand upon student background knowledge, introduce Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night to the class. Ask the students how they could make the painting part of the story and what that page would say. Ask the students if they would change anything about the painting to make it uniform with the book, to note whether the students comprehended the illustrations in the text.

Have the students fill out a sequence chart about each object introduced in the story. For example, on the left side of the chart will be ‘key’ because that is the first object introduced in the story. On the adjacent right side students should fill in ‘house’ because that is the second object introduced in relation to the key. The chart will continue on with ‘house’ in the next left column and students filling out ‘light’ in the right one and so on (students should also recognize a building pattern). This will allow the students to practice their ordering and time sequencing skills.

ESOL: The classroom activities provide great opportunities for ESOL strategies such as the utilization of flow charts, repetition/rephrasing, showing patterns, and time lines.

Read Aloud: I would read pages 1 through 20 aloud to the kindergarten class because it is the whole first half of the book, and the remaining pages are a repeat. By reading the first half students can utilize their auditory comprehension skills and by reading the repeating last half, students can practice their visual reading and comprehension skills, therefore using two learning skills for one book.

Personal Opinion: When considering The House in the Night, I did enjoy the repetitive nature and can appreciate the illustrations and their use of color, line, and texture. Throughout the book the sentences flowed from each page, and even became almost ‘sing-song’ like.  The illustrations and color usage kept the reader guessing as to what the illustrator wanted highlighted in the story to emphasize its importance.