Book to explain empty house before moving to a child

What happens in your child and the Empty Rooms

1. Your child notices the sitting room sounds loud after the sofa and rug are taken away.
2. A cardboard-box puppet suggests testing each room’s funniest echo.
3. Your child visits the bedroom, kitchen and hallway, sharing a favourite memory in each one.
4. The empty rooms become a goodbye game, with claps, whispers and waving at familiar corners.
5. Your child leaves the old front door feeling ready to make new sounds in a new bedroom.

How the first page could read

On Tuesday morning, your child stood in the sitting room and listened carefully. The sofa had gone, the rug had gone, and even the little table by the window had disappeared. “Why is our room so loud?” your child asked. Mum clapped once. The sound bounced around the bare walls. “It’s echoing,” she said.

Your child’s name, look and little details replace these words, and the whole story is written for their age.

Why this story works

For a child aged three to five, an increasingly empty house can feel puzzling: familiar rooms look larger, sounds change and favourite places no longer look the same. This story gives your child a simple, active way to notice those changes without making the empty rooms the villain. Each room is recognised for what happened there, then included in a playful echo test and goodbye. Made from a photo of your child, the 32-page book places your child at the centre of this particular moving-day moment. The gentle, short text suits younger listeners, while the room-by-room structure gives parents natural pauses for their child’s own questions.

Reading it together

• Read one room at a time while packing, and ask your child what they remember doing there.
• Try a safe echo or clap game together in a cleared room, then let your child choose a goodbye wave or phrase.
• Read the final pages again in the new home and make an echo game for one new room.

Suggested art style: Storybook watercolour

Soft storybook watercolour keeps the bare rooms warm and familiar while showing their changing shapes clearly. A sidekick idea: a friendly cardboard-box puppet. You can pick any of the four styles and change the details in the form.