Caldecott winner Ed Young’s childhood home, built by his father, becomes a refuge for friends and relatives in Shanghai during Japan’s invasion. All during the war, the home provides a sense of secu - rity and imagination for the young art - ist. Afterword

Gorgeous! Ed Young's childhood in China, in a house that was added onto as more relatives or friends came seeking refuge from WWII. Lovely collage and mixed media illustrations and a great tale of generosity and family. Winner of 2012 Norman A. Sugarman Children's Biography Award. ( )

In my opinion this is a wonderful book to read especially if you want to learn about someone’s struggle through the great depression. The language in the book was very clear and informative it talked about a man’s life during the great depression and how he managed to secure land and helped other refugees. The book really had me thinking about people who went through that and it broaden my perspective because before this I really didn’t think about the great depression. The messeage of this book was to always have hope and help others whenever you can. ( )

Ed Young tells the story of his childhood in Shanghai. Born in the year Japan invaded Manchuria, Young lived in a sprawling, crowded, happy house his father built for them in a safe part of the city. It is a collage of memories presented in text, sketches, photos and colours. ( )

I had the misfortune to lose my father, roughly one month ago, after a protracted illness - a reality that I am still struggling to assimilate - and stories about the role that fathers play, in a child's life, about the houses they build, whether real or figurative, for their families, are especially poignant for me right now. So it is that The House Baba Built, a picture-book memoir about the youth of celebrated children's artist and author Ed Young - whose Lon Po Po was a Caldecott Medal-winner, in 1990 - and a tribute to his beloved father, moved me to tears this morning, and it was only by the strongest efforts at self-control that I avoided breaking down altogether on the train. I am, as it happens, having trouble writing this review without tears.

Leaving aside this coincidence of timing, and the fact that my visceral emotional reaction to the book has as much to do with the events of my own life, as with the ones depicted here, I believe I can truthfully say that this is an outstanding title, one with immense visual and narrative appeal. Young, assisted by Libby Koponen, sets out the tale of his boyhood in Shanghai, and of the extraordinary house that his architect father constructed for the family, which initially included Young himself, his parents, and his four siblings, but eventually grew, during the years of World War II, to include extended family, fled from Japanese-occupied Nanking, and a refugee family (the Luedeckes), fled all the way from Germany. The artwork, done in mixed-media that includes photographs of all the people depicted, is incredibly engrossing, suiting each passage to a tee, while the book's design itself - the occasional fold-out page, the arrangement of the type on different parts of the page - is creative, and adds to the reader's sense of being drawn in, and enfolded by the story - enfolded by the house that Ed Young's Baba built.

Most moving of all, however, is the sense that Baba's house, as depicted here, is more than just a structure, built of double-tiered brick walls and eighteen-inch thick concrete slabs (in order to withstand bombing), but also a feeling of family, a sense of security, and a way of living. Baba's house, as exemplified in the letter he wrote to his children, after they had spread to the far corners of the world, was something they took with them:

"Dear Children, ... You may put down as rule No. 1 that life is not rich not real unless your partake life with your fellow man. A successful life and a happy life is one measured by how much you have accomplished for others and not one as measured by how much you've done for yourself. love Dad"

Clearly, Baba's House is one worth living in, and I finished this book with a renewed appreciation, not just for Ed Young, and his family's story, but for the reality that we all of us, in some sense, live in the houses built by our parents. ( )