I trust the idea that I get from a child.

And never more than in this book because, one day on the corner of Amsterdam and 76th Street in New York City, I heard a little girl, riding her father’s shoulders, say:

“A girl is Daughter
And a boy is a Son.”

And I knew I had the beginning of a picture book.

They became the first two lines of THE HOUSE THAT’S YOUR HOME. (And… It comes out TOMORROW! I can hardly even wait.)

Someone said that the first two lines of a poem give you the DNA of the rest of the poem. I was given the DNA for this book by a child.

She was trying to define where she belonged. And who belonged to her.

And that’s what this book is all about.

You are home. You are safe. You are loved.

“In a picture book that feels at once nostalgic and fresh, Lloyd-Jones and Dyer channel the best of contemporary mood pieces (see, for example, Scanlon and Frazee’s All The World) and the everyday-life books of yesteryear (such as Krauss and Sendak’s A Hole Is To Dig)… The graceful hand lettering adds much to the book’s pleasing design, and its clear readability will be a boon to adults who will doubtlessly engage in repeated readings with children in their own homes.” The Horn Book

THE HOUSE THAT’S YOUR HOME, Illustration copyright ©2015 Jane Dyer