AUTHOR: Josep Gregori and Fran Parreño
PUBLISHER: Algar
GENRE: Children’s book
READER June 7, 2020

Sis Anys, sis casetes (Six years, six little houses) is a book about the changing notion of family and what families look like: contrasting with traditional nuclear families organized around one mother and one father, this book presents a different one where the main character’s mother and father both have new partners. This book normalizes new families while at the same time depicting fundamental fears kids have about the separation of their parents: losing importance or love from their mother and father due to the incorporation of new members of the family.

Narrated in the first person by a five year old girl who is about to turn six, Sis anys tells the story of the anxieties the narrator goes through because of the fact that her parents are separated. While her birthday approaches, she wonders if her parents will remember the tradition around this very special date. While every previous year she used to receive a cutout house, she is unsure about what will happen the current year. While describing what her life looks like these days (her mom and her dad live in different places, she goes from one to the other, sometimes she does not have the right clothes where she is, once her parents were not sure about whose turn it was to pick her up at school so both show up), she is afraid that her parents will forget her birthday. She remembers how previous years all of them got ready to celebrate, but this year it just feels different. When describing her current life, she refers to her “second mother” and her “second father,” the new partners of each parent, as well as to the professions of her parents (unconventional in gender traditional expectations: her mum is a mechanic and her “second mother” studies to be a firefighter). Finally, when her birthday arrives, she does not receive a cutout house, but six: each member of the family—including grandma and grandpa—had built a cutout house for her. The narrator is happy because she has many houses to split between her two homes, as well as a new baby brother to be born soon.

With the metaphors of the houses and the villages, Sis Anys, sis casetes celebrates new families and challenges some traditional gender roles and attributes. It reads as a simple and fundamental contribution to diversity since it shows families that children reading this book might easily identify as theirs. While this expansion of the definition of family is a great element, the race issue is somewhat overseen in this book. The fact that all characters in the book are white may be less than ideal in a racially complex context such as the one the US is going through this year. Maybe in a collection with a more racially diverse book offering, this book could be a good addition towards the expansion of the meaning of the word “family.”