We Just Moved

We Just Moved by Stephen Krensky was a very enjoyable book to read because the words and the illustrations in the book tell two separate stories. The words are telling a simple story about a little boy moving to a new town, and getting adjusted to his new house, friends, and neighborhood. The illustrations are telling a story about a little bout moving from a castle to an even bigger castle. He has to get used to having an alligator as a pet, knight armor as toys, playing games on horses, fairy tale characters as friends, and secret hiding places in his basement. I think this is a great book for kids to relate to when they are moving to a new town. Though the pictures in the book are not going to be something kids are experiencing, I think they symbolize how different kids perceive the new town they just moved to. The fairytale like scene the boy sets up reminds me of how different I thought the town of Mundelein, Illinois was when I moved there from West Des Moines, Iowa. I was so content with my life in Iowa, so when I had to change every aspect of my life, it almost did feel like I was imagining it like a fairytale. In my new class room, all of the students were more advanced in math than I was. I felt like long division was foreign to me. They also participated in games at recess that I never heard of such as Butts Up. The friends I would meet did not remind of my friends from Iowa. And the toys that were popular in Iowa like beanie babies were definitely not popular in Illinois. Even though the new parts of my life I was being introduced to were not scenes from a fairytale, I felt like they were because they were so foreign to me.