I found it!

Off and on for the past few years I have been trying to remember the name of a children's book I used to check out of the library all the time as a kid. It was about a family of "people" that could change shapes. They had a cool house they built themselves after a long journey to find the perfect space.

I could remember pictures and just about every detail from the story except for the title and the character's names.

I tried describing it to people. No-one I asked had ever heard of it.

For some reason the book came to my mind tonight. Since Todd is at Bible study and the boys are sleeping, I set out on a mission to google until I found the name of that book.

After about an hour of googling every part of the story I could think of, I found what I was looking for! The book is Barbapapa's New House! YAY!

I learned all kinds of trivia about the Barbapapas. The book originates from France. There were several books in the series, a TV show and books published in all different languages. There are t-shirts, pez dispensers and collectible toys. Apparently I was just asking the wrong people.

One of the sites even had illustrations from the book!


Barbapapa's house was too small for his wife and their seven children.

They found an old abandoned house and fixed it up. They did all the changes around the house themselves by transforming into the household equipment they needed. It was perfect until...




The mean heavy equipment trucks came and destroyed their house. (I don't think we ever learned why.)



The Barbapapas would not give up on the perfect house. They ingeniously built their own.

The machines came back to destroy their new house in the country- evil machines! But this time the Barbapapa's prevailed. They defended their home with chewing gum cannon balls. They didn't want to hurt the machines, just keep them away from their home.

This is my favorite illustration. They each had their own room perfectly designed for them.
And, of course, they lived happily ever after.

I'm not sure why I loved the book so much, but I did. It made me so happy to find the title and see all of the illustrations tonight. Simple pleasures.