Clancy’s family has just moved from a small house to a city apartment, and he’s filled with anxiety about how different—and big—everything is. The boxes from the move are stacked in the yard behind his building, and he’s sitting inside the cozy, contained space of one when Millie appears. “Can I play too?” Soon the two are transforming the empty boxes into extraordinary structures as they pretend to be the Three Little Pigs. Libby Gleeson’s spot-on understanding of a child’s anxiety is perfectly matched by Freya Blackwood’s imaginative illustrations, in which the fantastic box structures—while impossible in reality—echo Clancy’s distorted perception of how big and unwelcoming he felt his new home to be. Clancy’s new, urban environment gains more and more color in the illustrations as his feelings transform, thanks to the warmth and reassurance of a new friendship. (Ages 4–7)

When you have one big house, two small children, a game of Three Little Pigs and a huge stack of cardboard boxes ... You discover that friends are what make as house your home.



Libby Gleeson and Freya Blackwood, whose first book together was the award-winning Amy & Louis, have teamed up to produce a stricking story about loneliness, friendship and what it means to move house and start afresh.