When a young girl visits her grandparents in their small house on the beach, she and her grandma look for shells every morning. They only keep the empty ones because shells are “little houses” for living things. The girl (light-brown-skinned) imagines the empty shells as rooms. She wonders who might have lived in them and whether there is a ghost inside. She also wonders about where the shells came from, what’s under the water in the ocean, how old the rocks are, and how deep the water is and why it can be so many colors at once. “I’d like to know what a pelican thinks of a sandpiper, and if a snow egret has ever seen snow.” Her grandpa assures her that someday she’ll know it all. For now, she knows this: She will take some of the little houses home to her own house. Her favorite will have a special place. “A house in a house in the world.” The measured, artful text moves from intimacy (the space inside a shell, family) to expansiveness (big ideas, big world) before returning to the comfort of home. The richly hued illustrations, done with acrylic pen and ranging from double-page spreads to a series of oval images, echo this duality of expansiveness and security in a picture book quietly illuminating the ways in which a shell, and the world, and the mind of a child all contain wonders. Highly Commended, 2023 Charlotte Zolotow Award ©2022 Cooperative Children’s Book Center     (Ages 3-7)