The House at the End of the Road

Like so many works of children’s literature, The House at the End of the Road takes place during that glorious expanse of unparalleled independence - summer vacation. Free from the burdens of school or parental supervision, three children (the narrator, her brother, and cousin) roam their grandma’s small town. While out exploring, they happen upon a derelict house they assume has been abandoned. “Have you ever seen a window break?” asks cousin Robert before launching a stone through a pane. When a man appears at the broken glass, the children panic. Thinking they’ve seen a ghost, they take off, leaving one of their bikes behind.

The next day, wracked with guilt, the children confess to their grandma - the window, the bike. To their surprise, they learn the ghost has a name, Mr. Peterson, and is not a ghost at all but an old man who was once their grandma’s favourite teacher at school. She brings the children back to the house to apologize and collect the bicycle.

The House at the End of the Road is Vancouver-based author/illustrator Kari Rust’s second picture book. Her first, Tricky, was nominated for the Ontario Library Association’s 2019 Blue Spruce Award and 2019 Chocolate Lily Book Award. Rust is a talented artist and skillful storyteller, and her background in animation is apparent throughout her work which is lively and expressive, capturing with ease the energy and exuberance of childhood. She experiments with form, incorporating multiple-panels sequences and speech bubbles in an effective and visually-interesting style. In this way, The House at the End of the Road offers an introduction to comic book conventions not typically seen in picture books.

When Grandma and the children return to the old house, Mr. Peterson invites them in and shows them around. His film projector, tin toys, and dusty photographs, all windows into an earlier time, enthrall the children. He gives each child a parting gift, and, with that exchange, a friendship is born. The children continue to visit Mr. Peterson throughout the summer, playing in the house and helping him tend to his garden, until one day, when Mr. Peterson wasn’t there.

Here, the book could have easily diverged into a story of death, but Rust opts for a somewhat softer blow. A man in a pinstripe suit is seen posting condemnation notices on the door of the house, and readers learn that Mr. Peterson has been “moved out” and “taken to a retirement house by the river.” As a matter of narrative convenience, he has also “caught a bad cold, so no visitors for two weeks,” by which time summer would have ended and the children gone back home. By framing this story through the eyes of a child, Mr. Peterson’s move seems sudden and without agency. While perhaps a naive misunderstanding, the abrupt way his relocation is presented as an inevitability of aging is somewhat unsettling. Who decided Mr. Peterson had to leave his house? Was his health failing in a way the children couldn’t see?

Distraught, the children want to “save” Mr. Peterson’s things, but the house has already been emptied. Robert sneaks inside with the camera Mr. Peterson gifted him and photographs the bare rooms. Together, the children put together a care parcel with Robert’s photos and other mementos for their grandma to deliver to the retirement home. The book ends on a positive note, with the arrival of a letter from Grandma and a photo with Mr. Peterson in the retirement home. “I can hardly wait for next summer,” the narrator signs off.

The House at the End of the Road is not only a story of friendship bridging the generational divide, but it’s also a nostalgic recollection of the way summertime punctuates a childhood.