The House of Four Seasons - Roger Duvoisin

The House of Four Seasons by Roger Duvoisin / ISBN 9781681370989 / 40-page hardcover reprint from the New York Review Children's Collection

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By the author of the bestselling picture book Petunia, The House of Four Seasons is a bright and lively family picture book about colors, imagination, and compromise

When Father, Mother, Billy, and Suzy go house hunting in the country, they fall in love with a grand old house nestled among tall weeds and trees. It is in need of repair, and soon a carpenter, mason, and tinsmith come to set things straight, but it needs painting too. The family agrees it would be more fun to paint the house themselves, but no one can agree on the color, and to make matters worse, the hardware store only carries three colors: red, blue, and yellow. But Father has an idea. “You’ll see, he says, “colors can do many tricks when they get together,” and with a sudden flourish, a color wheel appears! Budding artists and engineers will love this surprising story, and adults would do well to note how Father arrives at a winning trifecta of negotiation, education, and thrift.

Roger Duvoisin (1900–1980) was born to a French Swiss family in Geneva. He graduated from the École des Arts et Métiers and the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva and early in his career worked as a mural and stage-set painter before settling on textile design. In the late 1920s, he immigrated to the United States, where he soon began writing and illustrating children’s books. The author of more than forty of his own books, Duvoisin also collaborated with many writers, including his wife, Louise Fatio Duvoisin, and Alvin Tresselt, with whom he won a Caldecott Award for White Snow, Bright Snow in 1948 and the Caldecott Honor Award for Hide and Seek Fog in 1966. Today he is best known for Petunia, the story of a not-so-silly silly goose.