The Biggest House in the World

GREAT BOOK!! Moral of the story - travel light in every respect and you will be free to go wherever you want, whenever you want. Don't let yourself become bogged down by material possessions and the greed to have more and more because one day you'll be so weighed down (by responsibility and debt), that you will eventually die, in spirit and body, and it won't matter then how pretty you look on the outside. A fine tale for today's economic woes! Parents, buy this book, and read it to your kids as I read it to mine! Leo Lionni's books are great for children as well as adults!

My mother read this book to me when I was little. As she recounted the snail's lesson--to keep your house small and easy to carry--she reminded me of this often in my journey to adulthood. This became her mantra whenever we discussed, interestingly enough, real estate. So when my husband and I talked about buying our first home, I kept hearing the book's theme and my mother's words ringing in my ears "Keep your house small and easy to carry." Parents, I think this is a great way to teach the value of living within (or even below!) your means and not being lured by the luxurious lifestyles of the "Joneses." The value of this book is in the lifelong lessons it teaches and I encourage all parents to affirm the lessons taught here throughout their children's lives.

Two warnings: 1) the snail in the fable part of the story dies for lack of food, which could be a little too sad for very little kids; and 2) on one of the pages there is lots of text describing the pictures on the next page, and the next page has no text at all because the illustration takes up all the room. You have to memorize the last part of the text on the one page and then go ahead and turn the page and then recite it to your child-- it gets easier by the tenth or eleventh time. :) In this book, the little snail tells his father he wants to have the biggest house in the world. The father tells his son that is silly, that he should keep easy to carry. The father says once a little snail grew a house as big as a melon, added pointed bulges and bright colors, and was admired by butterfiles and frogs. But he and the other snails ate up the cabbage on which they lived. The other snails moved to the next cabbage, but the snail with the big house was stuck, and "faded away." His house crumbled into nothing. The son decides to follow his father's advice and keep his house small. One day he goes on to see the world-- ferns, pebbles, lichen, trees, flowers-- and the little snail was very happy. The moral could be not to weigh yourself down with big purchases or large debts-- like Dave Ramsey says. Or that you should be content with what you have. Or that possessions are temporary but experiences aren't. It's a book I've loved for years, my kids love it now, the illustrations are beautiful, and the story makes a good fable.

What unique characters Lionni chooses! My boys loved the pastel colored illustrations of the snails and their "houses." We also get to see an example of oral tradition: the title fable is really a story within a story. When one little snail expresses his wish to build a really big house, an older snail tells him the story about the consequences of having such an enormity for a house. Later, much older, the little snail is asked why his house is so small, and he answers by telling the tale. Not terribly exciting, but enjoyable; and the illustrations are, as usual, gorgeous, especially that amazing and huge snail house.

This is another great story from Leo Lionni! In this book, a snail wishes that his house would be the biggest house in the world, but he finds out that there are consequences to having the biggest house. The moral of the story is "be careful what you wish for, it might come true." A great read!