House in the Mail Book

Creating a scrapbook in 1927, a young girl tells the story of how her family orders a house in the mail and puts together the kit with a bucket of nails. She talks about how they move out of the little house they share with their grandparents and all the changes and excitement of the new technology she discovers; like an electric refrigerator, electric lights, a washing machine, a gas stove, and running water indoors.

The first time that I read this book I was immediately intrigued at how the speaker so easily pulls the reader in, by pulling you through a "time warp" back to the time when she was writing. I was disappointed in the fact that this idea of directly addressing the reader was not carried throughout the book. Overall I love how the book is organized to make it feel like it is a scrapbook of sorts, with illustrations of photographs, pressed flowers, and labels of these images to make it seem like a real scrapbook. I also like how Wells formatted the text in the book. By choosing a font that looks like writing and framing the words as if they were written on real paper, helps carry the idea that the speaker is writing a letter throughout the book. The cover also ties into the theme of a scrapbook and the illustration is of a girl (the main character) holding a scrapbook, which shows that the young girl is the speaker and is most likely holding the book that we are reading. I think this book would be an interesting book to use in the classroom if talking about how to write a personal story, or a narrative. Also it would be interesting to use this book to show how to use pictures to help the reader know what you are talking about in the text.