In 2007, Bean published
At Night, his first book as both author and illustrator. The story follows a girl lying awake in the evening in her
Brooklyn home who goes up to the roof to look out at the city.
Kirkus Reviews described it as "perfectly constructed and balanced" with "warmly composed pictures." The
New York Times said the book was "as calming as a mug of warm milk," with praise for Bean's
watercolor and ink illustrations. Bean's illustrations for
The Apple Pie that Papa Baked, written by Lauren Thompson, was recognized with the New Illustrator Award for 2008 by the
Ezra Jack Keats Book Award program. In 2013, Bean published the semi-autobiographical
Building Our House, a book about a family relocating to the countryside to build a timber-frame home. Told in the fictionalized voice of Bean's older sister, the story encompasses the move away from the city and into a temporary trailer, followed by site preparation, framing, and finishing over the course of two winters, along with the birth of another child. Some elements of construction were modified to fit the story; for example, the construction of the Bean family's home took five years, not the one and a half depicted in the book. In a survey of recent children's books on American themes,
Rebecca Traister described
Building Our House as "shot through with pioneer spirit" and "suffused with the cozy self-sufficiency of a
Laura Ingalls Wilder tale." It was also named a notable book of 2013 by
The New York Times Book Review. Bean followed
Building Our House with
Big Snow, also in 2013, about a Black child in New York City awaiting his first big
snowstorm. The
New York Times described the story as reinforcing "the consoling home life — portrayed in happy and straightforward watercolor pictures — that has become the signature of Bean’s work."
This Is My Home, This Is My School was Bean's next semi-autobiographical story. The story's narrator—a fictionalized version of Bean—guides readers on a tour through his house, the same house pictured in
Building Our House, using different rooms to demonstrate how homeschoolers learn: flash cards in the living room, science experiments in the basement, cooking classes in the kitchen, collecting specimens in a stream and "recess" in the backyard. In the story, a "substitute teacher"—Bean's father—returns home at a certain point in the day to "teach" physical education. The
New York Times noted that Bean's artwork displayed "characteristic ramshackle, loose-limbed charm, with bright watercolor brushstrokes straying exuberantly outside the pen-and-ink lines," which it called "reassuring . . . Bean is not presenting home schooling as an escape from the unruliness of reality, or as a bid for total control over everything in a child’s life." The
Times reviewer added that the book made homeschooling "look like a potentially sane, enlightened alternative." ==Personal life==