This Little House Went to the City - And Longs to Return Home

Be careful what you wish for. There’s no place like home. These are two adages that sprang to mind as I read Virginia Lee Burton’s Caldecott-winning The Little House. But mostly, what I thought was, “Boy, urban development sure has changed the landscape of the country, hasn’t it?” And not necessarily for the better.

In this story, first published in 1942, we meet the Little House, a charming pinkish-red cottage with a cheerful little chimney, smiling window-eyes and a front porch curved into a gentle smile. She’s a happy little home secure in the knowledge that she will “never be sold, for gold or silver” and that she will stand firm for generations. So she does. But a funny thing happens as the years pass by and the children and grandchildren of the man who built her take over ownership. The world begins to change.

We’re never given any exact dates for this story, but there are four generations between the building of the house and the tale’s conclusion. It’s reasonable to assume, at least, that more than a century has passed. In that span of time, the house watches as her surroundings become unrecognizable. Page by page, Burton shows us the slow encroachment of the city upon the idyllic countryside where the house rests. Initially, the lights of the city are far in the distance, piquing the house’s curiosity. By the time she comes to understand what the city is really like, she no longer finds it compelling. All she wants is to return to her quiet hill in the countryside, where she is surrounded by green grass and fresh breezes instead of high-rises and honking cars.

Burton describes the changes that occur in simple, repetitive language that at times becomes almost tedious, particularly toward the end of the book when every other sentence begins with “pretty soon”. I suspect, though, that she intended this as a device by which to indicate the speed of “progress” in comparison with the very slow unfolding of the seasons demonstrated early in the book. The pace of the story definitely picks up about halfway through; the first real indication of man-made change is on page 12, when, to the house, “the lights of the city seemed brighter and closer.”

First comes a road cutting through the field. Before long, many little houses dot the hillside, and the blue sky begins to be tinged with gray. Still the house smiles resolutely. But when apartment complexes go up, and then an elevated train and skyscraping office buildings, she seems to shrink and lose all of her color as her porch sags in despair. If this is what it means to live in the great, bustling city, the time has come to dream of the country.

I’d hesitate to say that the woman who managed to make a piece of construction equipment such an appealing character in Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel is completely opposed to urban development. Nonetheless, she definitely seems to favor small towns rather than concrete jungles, and to regard the country above both. I catch a hint of the conservationism and disillusionment with the Industrial Revolution so evident in the life and works of such authors as Beatrix Potter, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Unlike those three, Burton was American, but the changes to the landscape here have certainly been just as dramatic as in the UK.

The Little House offers a powerful illustration of the fast pace of development while concluding on a sweet note that is at least temporarily optimistic. The story ends well for the house, though I can’t help wondering how long it will take for history to repeat itself. It’s a little dark for a book aimed at children in early elementary school, but then that’s probably the age when it’s likeliest to make a strong impression, encouraging future generations to temper progress with preservation so that there will always be places where one can watch the seasons pass and soak in the quiet splendor of the stars.