Mary Ann Hoberman (1930-2023)

A House Is a House for Me – written by Mary Ann Hoberman, illustrated by Betty Fraser
Viking Press, 1978

Poet and author Mary Ann Hoberman has left a distinctive legacy, particularly of intelligent and entertaining books in verse for children. There are so many to celebrate; one of the most memorable is A House Is a House for Me, a meditation of what it means to be a house to something or someone else.  With its hypnotic rhythm and philosophical bent, the book encourages kids to look at the world in a new way.

If you look at it long enough, almost every object or being is a container:

          Cartons are houses for crackers.

          Castles are houses for kings.

          The more that I think about houses,

          The more things are houses for things.

Each section of the extended poem is different, but they share certain qualities. There is repetition, rhyme, and emphatic punctuation. Note the period at the end of lines that represent complete thoughts.  In the verse above, Hoberman includes a reference to the process of thinking that frames the entire book. 

Hoberman worked with many illustrators, including Betty Fraser, whose pictures here are witty embodiments of Hoberman’s idea.  A boy lounging in a hammock dreams of seemingly disparate proofs of the house idea: a pincushion, a bowl of salad, a kangaroo and its joey, a hand covered in band-aids:

         

And if you get started in thinking,

          I think you will find it is true

          That the more that you think about houses for things,

          The more things are houses to you. 

A little time for quiet contemplation can lead to a new understanding.

Towards the end of the book, Hoberman raises a self-critical question; has she taken her idea too far?  Then she assures the reader, and herself, that thinking is a good thing. Don’t overthink that truth!

          Perhaps I have started farfetching…

          Perhaps I am stretching things some…

          A mirror’s a house for reflections…

          A throat is a house for a hum…

          But once you get started in thinking,

          You think and you think and you thinking

          How pockets are houses for pennies

          And pens can be houses for ink.

There are many mediocre books for children that directly impart messages.  Mary Ann Hoberman encouraged them to think, imagine, and question their own trains of thought.  That quality is only one of many that makes her work enduring.