Cute picture book that shows sometimes those you are trying to help can end up helping you instead. Love the artwork! The cover reminds me of Mrs. Piggly Wiggly's house, but this is not the same house.

Julia's House Moves On appears as just a fun-loving children's book with beautiful illustrations but the book has a deep message. This story follows Julia, her house, and the creatures that live with Julia. The house gets restless and while Julia is preparing to move, the turtle underneath moves anyway. Julia continues to plan ahead while the move does what it wants. This book teaches a beautiful lesson on if your plan doesn't work out, everything will be okay, and if you don't have a plan that's alright too. I will definitely be buying this for my classroom.

Julia's House Moves On is a sweet picture book by Ben Hatke.

Julia's house is full of misfit creatures, but it's seemingly not all that happy with itself lately. Suddenly the house starts moving on it's own! But don't worry, Julia always has a plan.

Honestly, the illustrations are gorgeous. It's whimsical and fun, everything that you want in a children's picture book. This book would be great for a fun story time session or as a great read before bed!

Four out of five stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and First Second Books for providing me a free copy of this book in exchange of an honest review.

In this sequel to Julia's House for Lost Creatures, the house and the lost creatures that inhabit the home are growing restless. It's time for a move and Julia has a plan. In fact Julia has a plan for almost every unexpected event and it's a good thing, too, because in his beautifully illustrated Book by Ben Hatke, nothing goes according to Julia's plans.

A great read aloud, this book offers opportunities to discuss the importance of community, perseverance, flexibility, and accepting help from other by working together. A great addition to Kindergarten and early elementary classrooms.
Thank you to First Second Books and NetGalley for this e-ARC.

Julia's house is a house for lost creatures, and it is getting restless. So many wonderful creatures live there and they are getting antsy and bored, so it is time to move on. Julia has a plan for every disaster that happens during the move, and the illustrations really bring everything to life.

These book is just as cute as the first Julia's House book. The art is lovely and the moral is delivered in a fun way. Perfect for fans of mythological creatures.

I love Ben Hatke’s books so much. The illustrations were bright and eye catching and I really enjoyed the text of the story very much.

I cannot wait to share this book with my students. I love Hatke's artwork in the Julia series, but the plot line is so relevant as we prepare our students to return to school school during such an uncertain moment in time. Julia can feel that it is time to move on, but each of her carefully laid plans is foiled by forces outside of her control, until the moment they aren't and a beautiful adventure unfolds.

I received an electronic ARC from First Second Books through NetGalley.
Julia knows it's time for the house to move on. She makes a plan and packs up everything in the house. Then, things go awry when the turtle holding the house falls in love and pulls them out to sea. Plans continue to be tossed aside until Julia stops working alone. The creatures including the newest, the ghillie, save the house and set the course for an unknown destination.
This sequel to Julia's House for Lost Creatures is charming and shares a needed lesson about letting go of plans when they aren't working. The illustrations are lovely and richly colored. Readers will love studying the details that enhance the story.

It’s a sweet little story about a girl who lives in a house that was built on the back of a giant turtle. In the previous book (Julia’s House for Lost Creatures), she had opened her house to lost creatures, and they all still reside with her in this book: goblins, trolls, a mermaid, and even a ghost.

But this time the house is restless, or rather, the turtle is, and despite Julia’s plans, things go awry leaving Julia castoff at sea until her friends pop up with a plan to save her.

I enjoyed it. It was sweet; it was simple, and I liked that her friends stuck with her through this unpredictable period, although it didn’t seem as if they would at first. It’s also a little silly in how the characters navigate the situations they are placed in. I think kids will like that about it.

ART STYLE:
I like it. There’s a lot of movement in it because of what’s going on in the scenes, but I also think it’s because of Hatke’s style for this picture book. There’s always some movement about Julia, even when she’s standing still, like her hair softly blowing in the wind.

I also like the colors used. Of course, I wondered what medium Hatke used. I believe acrylic paint, maybe…? (I always think it’s acrylic, lol.)

OVERALL: ★★★☆☆
A sweet story with silly moments that’ll make for a fun read.

Julia's House Moves On is a follow up to Julia's House for Lost Creatures, but it works perfectly as a standalone. Due out 29th Sept 2020 from Macmillan on their First Second imprint, it's 40 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats.

This is a beautifully profound short picture book for young readers. The text is in free verse and sets off the beautiful full color illustrations by author/artist Ben Hatke perfectly. Julia's house is a welcoming home for all the lost creatures who need a place to stay. Everyone feels that it's time for the house to move on, and (as usual) Julia has a plan. But before she can put her plans into action, the house decides to move on its own! Every time Julia tries to plan for the contingencies, the situation is taken out of her control.

With the lead times involved in book projects, I don't see how this prescient little book could've been a *response* to the current insecurity and stress of the current world situation with a pandemic and economic devastation all around, but it's certainly spookily well timed. I would recommend this wonderful book with its positive and gentle message to everyone. Children (of all ages) will be taken with the whimsical and pretty art, along with the message of positivity that occasionally things happen for which nobody can plan, and that's ok.

As a bedtime read, this will provide lots of scope for fun/silly voices, from the mermaid, to the goblins and trolls. It's a very short read, so will lend itself admirably to short reading sessions. The art is intricate enough and full of small details, that it would also serve admirably as a hunt-n-find session with one's favorite small person.

Five stars. This is a gorgeously rendered and beautifully written book.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

I really enjoyed the first Julia book, Julia's House for Lost Creatures, and so I asked for an e-ARC of this book through NetGalley. I think it makes more sense if you have read the earlier but not completely necessary. Here, the cast of strange creatures from the first book is still living with Julia. The art will look very familiar to fans of Ben Hatke's graphic novels (Zita and the Spacegirl trilogy, and Mighty Jack) and I love the way motion is depicted in many of the pictures. The creatures are getting restless, hence some of the movement, and the house is as well. Julia makes a plan to move on. But, like a lot of things in 2020, Julia's plans do not work out, and she and the creatures have to show high levels of adaptability. However, will they thrive when things get really rough. This one will be easy to make connections to after it comes out at the end of September. There are two lines at the very end that struck me. The second to last is true of me on a bad day, and the the very last one is true on a good day. I feel like 2020 has provided a lot of both so far.

Another great kids book form Hatke! There's something so whimsical and comic-y about his artwork, and I love it. His characters are memorable and fun and always put into fantastical stories, which I love also. A great sequel to Julia's House for Lost Creatures.

I requested and received an e-ARC of this book from Ben Hatke and First Second Books through NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

This was a strange little book with beautiful illustrations, weird and wonderful creatures, a house that has feelings, and a girl that "has a plan for that". I think kids will enjoy this tale of Julia and her plans and how they don't always work.

This is the story of a plan to make things go better that doesn't go the way they planned. Kids will relate to this story especially in this upside down world.

A sweet continuation to "Julia's House for Lost Creatures". Julia has a plan for everything but what happens when the plans aren't enough? Will her lost creatures help out or is Julia on her own?

Lovely book with beautiful illustrations. My little one loves monster stories so this was great. There were a couple of words that were odd choices for a children's book but overall a great little read! Thanks for letting me check it out.

Loved this story! A different view on the experience of moving for children. This time, the house moves instead of the child! Fun read with lively illustrations.

If I had a quarter for every time my plans have gone awry, I could probably fund the government's next stimulus plan.

And yet I continue to make them. And sometimes they work splendidly and sometimes they go more or less as expected and sometimes--most of the time--they leave me drowning in the floodwaters of the unexpected, clutching desperately for the raft-like security of pen and paper and a brand new plan.

But sometimes, some glorious times when everything is crashing to pieces around me, my plans are wrested away from my hands. I give in to the waves. Somehow, the waves are gentler than my lists and checkboxes and calendars. I'm lifted up to safety by an unseen hand, and I realize that my silly plans made no sense at all.

Trust. It's never easy. In my experience, pure offerings of trust lead to danger and uncertainty. The roughest moments of my life have followed my most sincere abandonment of my plans. And yet--they were the best times, too. They were moments I was lifted up and the moments I felt love in every fibre of my being. I could never have made a plan as good as that.

I've read a bit on this topic: saints and scholars and mystics all offer good advice on trust. I've struggled this past month to read through St. Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle, to wrap my mind around her exhortations to trust completely. And then--I read a little picture book that made it all seem clear.

Julia's House Moves On is technically a sequel to Julia's House for Lost Creatures, a warm and whimsical picture book by Ben Hatke. The sequel is warm and whimsical as well--but I found in it a new layer of beauty and meaning.

I could sum up the plot in one line: A girl makes plans; they go awry; but everything turns out better in the end. Sound a bit like my life, which is perhaps why it resonated so strongly with me. But this is one of those amazing picture books--perhaps like the classic Where the Wild Things Are--that I'll find impossible to read without finding metaphor and meaning. It could be a story about moving, about the confusion and discomfort, but ultimate joy, of leaving one home and making another. It could be a story about adventure, about abandoning the old and boldly facing the new and mysterious. It could be about growing up, leaving one stage of childhood behind to face a new one. It could be about facing the uncertainty of daily life with courage (as my 13-year-old said, "This is a book everybody should read in the time of Corona Virus."). It could even be about death, about moving on from this world and soaring into another.

I have no idea how much of this the author intended. When I see hints of the Blessed Mother, the Star of the Sea, in Julia's Queen of the Sea, is that my Catholic nerdiness reading too much into things? Is all my recent obsession about learning to trust God making me see hints of that everywhere? Maybe. Or maybe Ben Hatke's a genius. I'll let you decide.

Even if you read nothing into this story, it's gorgeous and sweet and enormously fun. I think you'll love it.

This is a story about a little girl named Julia who seems to like to be in control and have a plan. As the story progresses, events start to occur that are not part of her plan and they do not go as she had ented them to go. She tries to come up with a new plan to help everyone, but then another unexpected turn of events occurs. This is a cute story that tea heads kids to be flexible and even if things don't always go the way you want them to, they can still work out fine.