Houses and Homes and Crabs

  • A House for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle.
  • Is This a House for Hermit Crab? by Megan McDonald, illustrated by S.D. Schindler
  • Animals That Build Their Homes by Robert McClung
  • Sea Creatures Do Amazing Things by Arthur Myers

Eric Carle’s A House for Hermit Crab is a perfect introduction to sea creatures, in particular to hermit crabs and their propensity to inhabit the shells of other creatures to protect themselves. In the story, Hermit Crab goes through an entire year, each month looking for a bigger and more protective shell to live in.

Hermit crabs live on the ocean floor. Their skin is hard, except for the abdomen, which is soft. To protect this ‘soft spot’ the hermit crab borrows a shell and makes this its ‘house.’ Then only its face, feet and claws stick out from the shell. That way it can see, walk and catch its food. When a hermit crab is threatened, it withdraws into its shell until the danger has passed.

A House for Hermit Crab, Introduction

The genius of this picture book, aside from the illustrations which are luminous and colorful, like the ocean itself, is that instead of reciting dry facts about the hermit crab and and other sea creatures and their habits and habitats, Carle uses a story to create what is sometimes called a “living book.” Hermit Crab is personified. He thinks and talks and engages in negotiation with the sea anemones, starfish, corals, snails, sea urchins, and lanternfish that he meets, asking them them for the use or at least partial use of their shells or for directions to a new and more commodious home when he outgrows the current one.

This story about a particular hermit crab and his travels sticks in the mind much more readily than a book would that simply stated the facts. Hermit Crab becomes a character with whom we can identify and from whom we can learn. Some see a danger in this personification of animals as we teach children to impute to non-human creatures the desires and needs and thought processes that are peculiar to humans. However, this sort of story that engages the imagination and feelings of a child is just the right way to introduce children to the world that God has given to human beings to care for and to steward. We first come to love and feel for flowers, birds, bears, even hermit crabs, and then we can later learn more about how they should be cared for and how they actually differ from humans.

Megan McDonald’s Is This a House for Hermit Crab? is a more simple book than the Eric Carle title. In McDonald’s story Hermit Crab tries out several possible homes: a rock, a rusty tin can, a piece of driftwood, a plastic pail, a fishing net. Then, danger approaches in the guise of a pricklepine fish, and Hermit Crab finds just the right home and hiding place, just in time. S.D. Schlindler’s illustrations are more muted and pastel than Carle’s, but they, too, are infused with the colors of the seashore and its creatures. McDonald’s Hermit Crab doesn’t engage in any of the human activities of thinking and communicating that Carle’s does, so her story is a good contrast and accompaniment to the story in A House for Hermit Crab and a comparison of the two stories should create questions and and answers and a sense of wonder in relation to these fantastical creatures of the sea.

The other two titles listed above are more general books that show a variety of creatures, including crabs, and tell about their habitats and ways of building and finding homes in a more general, factual way. These books and others concerning marine biology and animal homes would be good follow-up titles for a child (or an adult) whose interest in these creatures has been piqued by Carle and McDonald and their stories. Living books lead to connections which lead to more books and to films and to real life experiences and to who knows where!

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