The House with 100 Stories

by Toshio Iwai (Author)

The House with 100 Stories
Reading Level: 2nd − 3rd Grade
100 floors. 100 new friends. 100 stories. Flip open this towering book vertically to climb and count with Tochi as he tries to discover who lives at the top of a strange, magical house.

Tochi receives a mysterious invitation to the House with 100 Stories. On each floor, Tochi meets the colorful, animal residents from squirrels working on their bonsai garden to bats taking baths on the ceiling. But who sent the invitation? Why do they live at the top of this strange house? Tochi must climb to the top to find out!

With a unique structure, readers flip open this book vertically to reveal towering illustrations of the House with 100 Stories. Readers feel like they are climbing the tower with Tochi as they follow the text from bottom to top.

Where’s Waldo? meets My Neighbor Totoro in this highly detailed and adorably illustrated counting book. Each floor features its own mini story as the reader counts with Tochi from 1 to 100. Packed with fun, hidden details, young readers will discover something new with every read.

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
Select format:
Hardcover
$18.99

Publishers Weekly

This vertically formatted counting story opens as Tochi, an astronomy-loving kid with pale skin and a Tintin-like quiff, receives a mysterious invitation from the sky to visit the top floor of a 100-story tower. As "up, up, up Tochi climbed" through each of the edifice's rooms, he learns that each block of 10 stories serves as a multilevel home for a different anthropomorphized animal community. The creatures welcome Tochi's polite arrival, piquing his curiosity about "what's next?" After traversing the floors via fanciful sets of stairs, ladders, and, in one case, a series of chutes, Tochi's top-floor host is finally revealed to be the Spider Prince, who presides over a high-altitude observatory that proves a perfect setting for two stargazers to forge a friendship and indulge their love of planets and stars. The premise gives artist Iwai plenty of opportunities to tickle readers' fancy and encourage repeated viewings: the enumerated floors are shown as cutaway-style rooms, each spotlighting details and vignettes that illuminate each species' particular domestic lives and interior design tastes. Readers should get a good giggle from how the snakes' house is built for slithering and how the lightly eerie bat house has everything upside down--including the toilet and bathtub. Ages 4-8. (Nov.)

Copyright 2023 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.

Review quotes

"This Japanese import employs a unique vertical format that will surprise and delight young readers, and the unusual configuration gives a real sense of Tochi's ascension, allowing for terrific spreads of uninterrupted 10-story cross sections. Every humorous page bursts with wonderfully specific details that beg for repeat examinations. An incredibly creative chronicle well worth the climb."—Booklist

"The premise gives artist Iwai plenty of opportunities to tickle readers' fancy and encourage repeated viewings: the enumerated floors are shown as cutaway-style rooms, each spotlighting details and vignettes that illuminate each species' particular domestic lives and interior design tastes. Readers should get a good giggle from how the snakes' house is built for slithering and how the lightly eerie bat house has everything upside down—including the toilet and bathtub."—Publishers Weekly

"A vertical journey through a well-imagined, wonder-filled world."—Kirkus Reviews
Toshio Iwai
Toshio Iwai is a Japanese interactive media and installation artist who has also created a number of commercial video games. In addition he has worked in television, music performance, museum design and digital musical instrument design. Iwai graduated from the University of Tsukuba with a master's degree in Plastic Art and Mixed Media. His award-winning installations include Time Stratum, which won the Gold prize at the 1985 High Technology Art Exhibition in Shibuya Seibu, Tokyo, and Time Stratum II which was awarded the Grand Prize at the 17th Contemporary Japanese Art Exhibition, Meguro Art Museum, Tokyo. Iwai was an artist-in-Residence at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, California, Iwai's works Well of Lights and Music Insects are part of the Exploratorium's permanent collection.
Classification
Fiction
ISBN-13
9780823455683
Lexile Measure
-
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
Holiday House
Publication date
November 14, 2023
Series
-
BISAC categories
JUV028000 - Juvenile Fiction | Mysteries, Espionage, & Detective Stories
JUV009030 - Juvenile Fiction | Concepts | Counting & Numbers
JUV030020 - Juvenile Fiction | People & Places | Asia
Library of Congress categories
Animals
Picture books
Dwellings

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