75. Living With Mum and Living With Dad by Melanie Walsh

Living With Mum and Living With Dad by Melanie Walsh
Published March 2012 Walker Books

From the publisher:

Mum and Dad don't live together any more, so sometimes this little girl lives with her mum and her cat, and sometimes she lives with her dad. She has two bedrooms and two sets of toys, but she takes her favourite toys with her wherever she goes.

A common story, with a new twist.  There have been other books about divorced/separated parents, but this one has the bonus of seeing both sides of the story on the same page.


On the first double page you have Mum's house with the pink door, and then you lift up the pink door house, to make a top floor flat, or turn the bedroom at Mums to the bedroom at Dads. This is the same on each page. See the pictures below to see how this works.

It's a very simple book, that does what it's supposed to do perfectly. It shows that when parents aren't living together, you can have homes in two places with two people who love you. The homes are different, but the same. There is even a really great page that shows both parents at the school concert, they aren't sitting together, but they are both there.

It would probably be considered a lift-the-flap book. The flaps are big and they change the whole page in a clever way. If you are in a school library and think that you can't have lift-the-flap books because they get damaged, I wouldn't worry about this one. It is worth having, even if you decided to keep it for a parent library or for teachers/councellors to use.

Who will like this book: Girls and boys age 4+
Read it if you like: Fred Stays With Me by Nancy Coffelt