This Is My Home, This Is My School

In this second autobiographically inspired picture-book, following upon Building Our House, which chronicled how his family built their own home, author/artist Jonathan Bean here tells the story of how he and his sisters were home-schooled by his parents. All of the rooms of their house are

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classrooms, and the entire world is their art studio and playground, while their mother functions as school-teacher and their father as substitute-teacher and sports coach, leading to a fully integrated learning process in which every experience is both fun and educational.

The loveliest tribute to home-schooling that I can recall seeing, This Is My Home, This Is My School offers an engaging tale, one sure to fascinate children who attend more traditional schools while offering affirmation to those who were home-schooled like the author. As mentioned above, this is the second picture-book I have seen from Jonathan Bean that is inspired by his family history - there is an afterward that gives more information, and includes photographs from Bean's youth - and I was reminded, in the course of my reading, of some of Patricia Polacco's more autobiographical picture-books. This is high praise indeed, but Bean's stories merit the comparison, I think. I enjoyed both story and artwork here, although I did feel that Bean's illustrations weren't quite as appealing here in this second volume, as they were in Building Our House. Somehow they seemed a little bit more "scribbly" in appearance, more Quentin Blake-ish, than they did before. Leaving that aside, this was a wonderful book, one I would recommend to anyone looking for children's stories about home-schooling in particular, or life as a learning experience in general.

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