"Home" is by Tonya Lippert.

I’ll begin today by giving a nod to someone I claim as part of my cultural ancestry. Robert Burns, Scotland’s premier poet, was born 264 years ago this month, and more than once I’ve found myself quoting his famous line: “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men / Gang aft agley.”

As it happens, that can happen to the best laid plans of book reviewers, too. Last month, in conjunction with the holidays, I’d intended to review two children’s picture books that covered the topic of home.

Unfortunately, I was able to get my hands on only one of them — Cynthia Rylant’s “Home Is Where the Birds Sing” — in time for my deadline.

The second book, “Home,” has just become available. Written by Portland mental health therapist Tonya Lippert, this picture book offers such a simple but powerful perspective on the themes of home and homelessness that I feel compelled to circle back.

The story begins with two freckled siblings, Clare and Wes, who live with their parents in a house where they have adventures and feel secure and happy.

But then their family faces a change. The change is unspecified, but the consequence is that the family has to pack up whatever belongings they can fit into their car and drive away from their house — forever.

At first, they end up sleeping on the couches and floors of their parents’ friends in the city.

Later they wait in lines for a place to sleep at night, or their names get placed on a wait list for temporary housing.

When autumn comes, Wes and Clare attend school and find some comfort in those routines and that normalcy, but they don’t want their classmates to find out that at night they sleep in a shelter. They’re afraid that their friends will worry about them, or ask uncomfortable questions.

Detailed figurative illustrations by Andrea Stegmaier demonstrate that the sibling duo, despite being literally unsettled by these changes, still exercises creativity in coping with them — whether drawing pictures, dreaming up stories, or weaving crowns of leaves to wear.

And even through the difficult times, their parents remain present — still tucking them in at night while working toward a solution for a more permanent place to stay.

Lippert knows whereof she writes. In a lengthy reader’s note at the end of this book, she tells how her own earliest childhood memories were of moving from hotel, to motel, to overnights with extended family.

Even after her own family was able to afford an apartment of its own, they continued to move from one apartment complex to another throughout her childhood.

In this post-pandemic age, the number of unsettled children and families continues to be a real concern. Enumerating those basic needs for love, safety, warmth and dignity, Lippert wrote this book to encourage empathy towards those who are experiencing housing instability, and to let children who are currently unhoused know that their situation won’t necessarily be that way forever.

This week’s book

“Home” by Tonya Lippert

Magination Press — 32 pp — $16.99