Books like If I Built a House
By Chris Van Dusen
For the kid who's already redesigning their bedroom in their head, this book hands them the blueprint paper. Bouncy, bright, and buzzing with invention — retro-futuristic and endlessly hopeful.
A groovy cat's rainy day surfing plans get cancelled, but instead of getting sad, he turns a big box into a launchpad for his imagination.
A young Chinese American girl notices color everywhere in her everyday world, from red dragons and firecrackers to lychees, and brown in her own teddy bear.
A young inventor imagines the ultimate car — complete with a snack bar, a swimming pool, and a robot chauffeur named Robert — then takes it out for a wild test drive with his dad.
A team of kid inventors heads to the zoo armed with zany traps and rhyming plans, determined to outsmart and catch the rainbow-maned unicorn.
A little boy turns his living room into a bustling traffic world, using records as rotaries, shoe boxes as highway ramps, and crayons as lane markers to make his cars stop and go.
A white shape drifts across page after page of blue sky, looking like a rabbit, a bird, an ice-cream cone, and more — until a final reveal answers what it really is.
A boy walks home from school and imagines wilder and wilder sights on Mulberry Street, building a story fantastic enough to tell his father.
A born builder who once made a tower from diapers and glue faces a teacher who despises architecture — until a class picnic goes wrong and his skills turn out to be exactly what's needed.
Two kids stuck inside on a rainy day get an uninvited visitor — a tall cat in a striped hat who promises fun and games while their mother is away.
A family travels from the country into the city for the day, taking in the sights along the way — then the book flips upside down and becomes an entirely new journey home.
