Gaulden, Michael. Hello, Neighbor! Illustrated by Rod Flower. Salt Lake City, UT: WiDo Publishing, 2023.

Guide to categories: Kid Review – review of books for elementary-aged and younger children

Links in this post may be affiliate links. Purchases made using these links will not cost you more but may pay me an affiliate fee. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and related sites. Thank you for using my links.

About Hello, Neighbor! 

Meet your new friend, Harry.  Harry is a cat without a roof over his head or a warm meal in his belly.

But he won’t let that discourage him.

Because, with friends like you, Harry has hope for a brighter future!

Hello, Neighbor! is an illustrated children’s book by Michael Gaulden, who grew up homeless in San Diego.  The colorful, charming illustrations are by artist Rod Flower.

This book for early readers addresses homelessness in an honest, yet hopeful way.  Harry shows us where he lives and introduces us to his friends, who care for and help each other as friends do.

Purchase Hello, Neighbor! on Amazon

My Kid Review

Michael Gaulden tells the story of what it is like to be homeless in a way young children will understand. Hello, Neighbor! uses cats instead of people to portray the many reasons people end up homeless. Most view kittens/cats as friendly creatures and I think that is the image Gaulden wants to portray about homeless people – they are friendly, they just are going through a rough patch. 

Rod Flowers illustrations complement the text well and will help children visualize situations they may not have seen yet in their lives. 

Hello, Neighbor! would be a great story to use as a lead into a service project that in some way helps the homeless. The text even includes some items that would be good to collect. 

K-12 Christian school libraries should have a copy of Hello, Neighbor! in their collections. It is a good example of Matthew 25:40.

I received a complimentary copy of Hello, Neighbor! This is my honest review. 

Read more Kid Review posts.

About the Author – Michael Gaulden: 

His life was barely worth a dollar. He slept outside, on park benches, in stairwells, under bushes. Michael Gaulden lived in shelter after shelter across the United States. With his father incarcerated and mother disabled, he stayed homeless for ten years. From the age of seven to seventeen, Michael, with his mother and sister, journeyed along his own underground railroad, desperately searching for a way to free his family from the sewers of society.

Michael learned death was a big part of youth homelessness. Education was not. To survive, he had to become something more. Caught in between two worlds- his dreams vs. his reality- violence, gangsters, hunger, poverty, and sorrow marked his daily life.

Michael vowed to change his fate through getting his high school diploma. He never hoped to dream that not only would he graduate from high school but also from a prestigious California university. This is the true story of a homeless boy, marked for prison or worse, who fought against tremendous odds and persevered to achieve academic and professional success.