nature picture books

[beary fun review] Grand Old Oak and the Birthday Ball by Rachel Piercey and Freya Hartas

~ jama ~ 21 Comments

Basil, Cornelius and the other resident bears were positively ecstatic when they heard about Rachel Piercey and Freya Hartas’s new poetry picture book, Grand Old Oak and the Birthday Ball (Magic Cat, 2023).

In this charming interactive follow-up to If You Go Down to the Woods Today (Magic Cat, 2021), readers are invited to join the inimitable Bear and his woodland friends as they plan a spectacular surprise party to celebrate Old Oak’s 500th birthday. Preparations will take most of the year with each season marked by fun activities.

As the story opens, Bear tells us that it all began in early spring:

HOW OLD IS OAK?

It started when I wondered,
as I never had before:
How long has Oak been growing here?
A hundred years, or more?

It must, I thought, take many years
of water, air, and light
to spread to such a wondrous width
and such a mighty height.

As Oak wakes up with his leaves unfurling, Bear asks him his age and learns (much to his astonishment) that his friend had sprung up on that very spot 500 years ago. As Bear starts thinking about all that Oak had seen in his long life, he begins daydreaming . . .

That summer, Bear comes up with an idea. What about a secret birthday ball for Oak? His friends roar and cheer in agreement. In no time at all, they create “piles and piles” of homemade invitations that are dutifully sent to everyone in Brown Bear Wood by lots of volunteers.

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[review] Tierra, Tierrita/Earth, Little Earth/Tal, Talchin by Jorge Argueta and Felipe Ugalde Alcántara

~ jama ~ 30 Comments

She is the oldest and most beautiful mother of all the elders. At once gentle and powerful, she is mountain, seed, cornfield, flower. Mother Earth. She is all and everything; she is life itself.

In Tierra, Tierrita/Earth, Little Earth (Piñata Books, 2023), Mother Earth introduces herself, detailing her expanse, majesty, and ongoing evolution. The fourth title in Argueta and Alcántara’s award-winning trilingual Madre Tierra/Mother Earth series about the natural world, it follows Agua, Agüita/Water, Little Water; Fuego/Fueguito/Fire, Little Fire; and Viento, Vientito/Wind, Little Wind. All four books illustrate the interconnectedness of all living things and express a deep reverence for our precious planet.

Mi nombre es Tierra
pero todos me conocen por Tierrita.

Yo soy la Madre Tierra
Ilena de todos los colores
y de todos los sabores.

*

My name is Earth
but people call me Little Earth.

I am Mother Earth
full of all the colors
and all the flavors.

Encompassing north, south, east and west, she is the Mother of Water, Fire, and Wind. Though others may call her “planet,” “nature,” or “creation,” she most likes “Mother Earth, Little Earth.” Spinning around the sun since time immemorial, she sings of flora and fauna, and is “the tiniest insect, the juiciest fruit, the most delicious greens you’ve ever tasted.”

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[review] Today I Am a River by Kate Coombs and Anna Emilia Laitinen

~ jama ~ 14 Comments

If you could choose to be any animal, plant, or aspect of nature, what would it be?

In Today I Am a River (Sounds True, 2023), Kate Coombs and Anna Emilia Laitinen invite readers to immerse themselves in the natural world by engaging in imaginative play. What could be more fun than pretending to be a spider, a tree, a cloud, or even the wind? In so doing, children gain new insight into Mother Nature’s beauty, power and magic.

This companion book to Breathe and Be: A Book of Mindfulness Poems, contains fourteen meditative, winsomely illustrated free verse poems that are life affirming and self empowering, reminding children that the imagination knows no bounds. The more we learn about the world around us, the more we realize there is simply no end to the wonder. This is how the collection begins:

I can be anything --
reaching high,
curling small,
leaping, whirling,
stopping to see --

I can be anything,
everything.

Kate’s beautifully crafted lyrical verses sing with spontaneity and gorgeous imagery. Children can’t help but respond to the unique first person voices and personalities in the poems, and will enjoy considering perspectives other than their own. As in “The River,” phrasing, movement, and rhythm have been polished to perfection.

RIVER

Today I am a river.
Here I come!

I ride down a mountainside,
flow boldly
across a wide valley,
explore a canyon
written in cursive --

I reach rocks and stones,
stumble and rumble,
leap and bound,
tumble around.

But still I flow.
Fast or slow, I find my way.

Inside I know
where I want to go.

I head for the sea. The be of me.
The big blue heart and soul of me.

Today I am a river.
Here I come!
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[guest post] Roxanne Troup on My Grandpa, My Tree, and Me

~ jama ~ 12 Comments

Like many stories, the final product of MY GRANDPA, MY TREE, AND ME is much more than the sum of its parts. And while I don’t know that I set out to write an intergenerational story, it became that through the process of revision.

The first spark of an idea for this story came about when I encountered a YouTube video of a commercial pecan harvest. I watched as a tractor with a padded arm grabbed hold of a tree and shook. Thousands of pecans thundered to the ground like torrential rain!

Though I’d grown up around farming, and knew a bit about mechanized harvesting, I was in awe. I’d never seen pecans harvested by tractor. I didn’t even know they made attachments for that! When we harvested pecans in Missouri, we gathered them by hand like the wild products they were. I was fascinated with the dichotomy of commercial harvesting versus home-harvesting and knew kids would find the process curious as well. But I needed an organic way to highlight both processes. When the phrase, “But not my tree,” came to me, I knew I’d found a story mechanism that could work.

My pre-draft (Yep, I just made that up. It’s the “draft” where all your ideas go—in no particular order.) was messy. It focused on the care and harvesting of pecans but wasn’t really a story. As a matter of fact, I never even finished it. But I also didn’t throw it away. I’d been reading, writing, and critiquing long enough to know it had elements I could work with. It included the refrain—“But not my tree”—that would stay with the story throughout each iteration. It hinted at a seasonal structure. And it had a nice child-like voice. I also never finished my first…or second…or third draft. When something isn’t working, I have a tendency to just stop and start again, taking what I learned in that partial draft to the next one (which I don’t recommend to anyone, but it is part of my process). 

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