House Held Up by Trees

A picture book by Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Ted Kooser and Canadian illustrator Jon Klassen, a poignant story about loss, change, and the quiet triumph of nature. The book was named one of The New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2012.

When the house was first built, its perfectly trimmed lawn held not a single tree to cast a patch of shade. The children would wander off to play in the overgrown yards next door, where dense thickets offered places to hide and build secret shelters. Then the children grew up and left, and the father continued his daily battle, pulling up the stubborn shoots that kept pushing through the grass. But time passed, and the father died, and the empty house began slowly to fill with trees that soon surrounded it, their shaggy branches closing around it.

This lyrical story about the unstoppable passage of time and the enduring power of the natural world is illustrated by Klassen in a restrained, earthy palette. His drawings are minimal yet deeply expressive; he conveys the inner drama of an apparently simple, everyday narrative with remarkable clarity. Sun-soaked open spaces, forest edges, and thick weeds give way to evening shadows and a railway line fading into the distance. The barren landscape with a solitary house feels even more desolate next to the sunlit, wildly overgrown forest. Klassen consistently brings symbolic depth to his images, revealing the story’s philosophical undercurrents — and it is striking how few visual means he needs to achieve this.