hello neighbour

When I was a kid, this was one of my favourite books. Not so much for Dr Seuss's rhymes (I probably can't read then), but for the illustrations. None of the homes in those pictures resembled mine! There was one illustration of the chestnut-haired boy having rice with a chinese boy who lived on a boat. The rice was these round white balls. Even the rice was not like the rice I ate!

Looking through the book today, my adult eyes noted the stereotypes and the naive idealism of

"Some houses are rich, full of silver and gold.
And some are quite poor, sort of empty and old.
Some houses are marble and some are just tin.
But they're all, all alike when a friend asks you in."

Anyway, I thought of this book only because J and I are finally giving in to the wanderlust and taking a holiday - albeit a very short one with Ma Y to visit our peninsular neighbour. For a treat, we got ourselves into a neighbour's house that will have lots of marble, even if it is not full of silver and gold.