Review by New York Times Review
ONE RISK OF RAISING bookish children: You create little shut-ins. No matter how blue the sky, how warm the day, how the susurrations of leafy trees beckon, they want to stay in the dark, cool house and read. I should know. I was one. "Put that down and go outside," I often heard, along with a lot of importuning about the benefits of fresh air. Four new picture books bring the outside in, taking young readers on adventures in illustrated forests. Strange, inscrutable creatures live there. These are unruly tales that conjure mystery and a little fear, bringing the wildness of nature to the cozy couch. The sensory pleasures of the woods are on display in "A Walk in the Forest," a quietly beautiful book written and illustrated by Maria Dek. Simple prose describes the "wonders" and freedom that await among the trees: The chance to "find treasure," "follow footprints" and "shout as loud as you want." Dek's illustrations are warmly colored and full of movement - birds wheeling in a sun-dappled canopy; another flock flushed to the sky (possibly by that loud shouting); the hind quarters of a deer leaping out of the frame. Shifts in perspective abound. One spread shows a wooded pond from the viewpoint of a bird above. The next shows ticklish pond weeds and a blissful pair of submerged feet. These clever visual leaps show how small and how big the forest can feel, and how many different places the forest can be. One of those places is "a little scary." As the book progresses it gets wilder and darker. Our hero encounters birds with "secrets" and an imperturbable fox, animals nestled in their woodland burrows, nightfall and the wide eyes of an owl in a dim, piney tableau. He retreats indoors and watches the night woods from the safety of his window. "You'll go there tomorrow," Dek concludes, "when you're older." Forest animals are the main characters of "Deep in the Woods," a vibrant modern retelling of a classic Russian folk tale from Christopher Corr. Rendered in electric hues - neon coral, Starburst pink, Jolly Rancher orange - against cool, unusual grounds of lilac, aqua, violet and periwinkle, the book looks more like a delectable candy box than anything photosynthesis would produce. "Deep in the Woods" is alluringly strange. It tells the story of a white, wooden house in a forest, with "nine neat windows and a red front door." The house stands "empty, cold and sad" - until some woodland creatures happen along and make it their own. A mouse, a fox, a lavender bunny, a swooping speckled owl: Most of the animals have eyes shaped like human ones, which make them look more sophisticated - knowing, mischievous, sometimes sad - than your average picture-book fauna. This diverse menagerie keeps house together until a big orange bear ambles along and wants in on the action, causing first strife and heartbreak and then - after some light woodworking to make a house that will fit his lumbering frame - rejoicing. There is a lesson here - about friendship, and sharing - but the book never feels plodding or pedantic. Its rhythms are as surprising as its vivid hues, full of small but powerful subversions of kid-lit logic: The animals show up in bunches, not page by page; there are a dozen or so creatures crammed into those nine neat windows. What's more, there are no grown-ups here. The animals are peers: They create their own society, and resolve their own conflict. Which may be why the lesson just goes down like the truth. If you were to accidentally rake "The Gold Leaf" into an autumn pile, you could be forgiven. The book, written by Kirsten Hall ("The Jacket") and illustrated by Matthew Forsythe ("Do Not Open This Book"), takes almost all its hues from nature. It is awash in wonderfully earthy yellows, greens and browns. The only surprise in this palette is gold itself. Hall's grandfather was an expert gilder who applied gold leaf to buildings across New York City, and the technique is used in the book's pages, lending a metallic glint to this tale of what happens when something covetable and shiny - a leaf made of actual gold - sprouts unexpectedly in the forest. The animals don't handle it well. First a warbler, then a chipmunk, then a mouse, then a deer take the gold leaf because they can. A fox grabs it because "if everyone else wanted it, well then, he did too." As the leaf passes from claw to nibbling mouth, it crumbles, until "tattered and torn, it lay in pieces at the animals' feet." The shredded leaf disperses in the wind, and the animals pass the rest of the year back at their usual forest pursuits (not a bad fate, given the subdued beauty of Forsythe's richly textured murk). Then spring brings a new gold leaf - and the wisdom to leave some of nature's mysteries alone. "Little Fox in the Forest," the authorial debut of the children's book illustrator Stephanie Graegin ("The Lost Gift"), is a wordless but action-packed adventure that uses comics-style panels to advance its narrative. It would be an intriguing title for a young reader to try on her own, although the threat at the heart of its story - a lost lovey - may evoke a primeval fear for kids and parents alike. Our heroine brings a beloved toy fox to class for show and tell. Thanks to Graegin's nifty panels, in which an array of old photographs serves as a flashback, we can see this has been a tender companion from when she was a babe. But at the playground after school, a real fox sneaks out of the forest to snatch his stuffed doppelgänger. Despondent, the girl sprints after it, followed by a concerned pal. In the woods, the duo find a secret world: tiny doors in trees, a soda fountain just for animals -and the culprit, a young fox enjoying story time with his new toy. Our protagonist makes a surprising decision about what to do next, one that will give young readers something to ponder. After all, what the forest offers children is independence, and a sense of what it might be like to grow up. Of course, that's something reading can offer too. JULIA TURNER is the editor in chief of Slate.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 24, 2017]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In a graceful parable with environmentalist echoes, Hall (The Jacket) and Forsythe (Please, Open This Book!) take readers to a forest where spring has returned in a whirl of animal activity and a riot of color: "Jungle green, laurel green, moss green, mint green, pine green, avocado green, and, of course, sap green." Those hues are forgotten when the animals discover a golden leaf in a tree; shiny gold detailing on the page underlines the idea that this leaf is truly special-something King Midas could have created, not simply a vivid holdover from autumn. The animals scramble to possess the leaf, and as it makes its way from bird to chipmunk to mouse and so on (a deer "nibbled its edges. Even its taste was perfect"), the battered leaf disintegrates and gets scattered to the wind. Hall's understated writing reads like poetry, and Forsythe's graphic, even geometric, paintings have the feel of animation stills. The animals' relief is almost palpable when the leaf returns the next spring-a gentle but firm reminder to respect the scarcity that makes a precious resource precious. Ages 4-8. Illustrator's agent: Judith Hansen, Hansen Literary. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A golden leaf becomes a bone of contention in a springtime wood.In the spring, shades of green are everywhere: "jungle green, laurel green, moss green, mint green, pine green, avocado green, and, of course, sap green"and one golden leaf. When the animals notice it, each wants it "more than anything else in the world." A warbler picks it, but then a chipmunk steals it, only to lose it to a mouse, who in turn surrenders it to a deer, before a fox snatches it. By this time the increasingly tattered leaf has been torn apart. Through summer and fall and into winter, the animals go about their lives, and when spring and all its greens returns againalong with that one golden leafthey all know better than to try to claim it: "Their happiness was that it had come back to them after all." Hall's story is luscious in its use of language, if a bit abrupt in an early transition, and the lesson, while clear, is lightly applied. There is lots of room for Forsythe's illustrations to shineliterally, as the golden leaf is rendered in gold leaf. It stands out startlingly against his soft-edged illustrations, which have the warm and comforting look of lithographs. Great painterly swaths of color background the serial theft of the leaf, causing its increasingly tattered state to be ever more apparent. The gold-leaf golden leaf could easily be a gimmick, but understated, intentional design causes the book to rise above thatlovely. (Picture book. 4-7) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
