(1) PS "This is your sun. It is coming up for you." Thus begins each of three original board books, accompanied by an image of the sun peeking up over an implied horizon line. Subsequent spreads introduce, one by one, other characteristic features you'd find on a Farm (barn, horse), in a Forest (cabin, stream), or on an Island (palm tree, boat) and add them to the scenes. "These are your plants. They can go on the ground." The basic-shaped objects accumulate on mainly white backgrounds; once the settings are fully created, the day concludes, and each book ends with the line: "Now you can sleep too and think about what you will do there tomorrow." A simple premise, but with subtle depth cleverly provided by Klassen. His minimalist style is on full display, from the brief, straightforward texts ("Here is your truck. It is a good truck. It can go in the barn too") to the sparsely populated pages. Of course, Klassen also infuses life and character into each object in the ink and graphite illustrations by giving them expressive eyes, which close at night when the farm, forest, and island go to sleep. Additional imaginative elements include a ghost in Forest and a magical fire that never goes out in Island. The whole process mimics and encourages a toddler's drawing activity, adding things to negative space to create art that tells a child-friendly story. In short, Klassen has crafted three unassuming master classes in picture-book making for the youngest listeners/viewers. Review covers these spring 2025 titles: Your Farm, Your Forest, and Your Island.

Reviewer: Cynthia K. Ritter | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2025

(1) 1-3 Illustrated by Emily Hughes. Fans of Atinuke's beloved chapter-book series know that Anna Hibiscus "lives in Africa. Amazing Africa" and Too-Small Tola "lives in Lagos, unbelievable Lagos." Now we meet protagonist Beti, who lives with her mother, father, and baby brother in a "little round house in the green woods under the mountains," with no running water or cellphones but with friendly farm animals and close friends and good neighbors nearby. In four brief sections, each set during a different season, readers follow this lively child's small-scale adventures. The book opens in spring, on Beti's birthday, with party preparations, including helping Mam bake a cake and then foraging for flowers to decorate it ("and pick some salad too!" says her father). She refuses to wear a party dress; her friends arrive; her birthday gift is...unexpected, as is her reaction to it. Beti is a classic Atinuke protagonist, with her age-appropriate highs and lows; her individuality and three-dimensionality; her moods, mischief, and creative problem-solving. The setting is painted through homey, specific details in the text and in Hughes's (illustrator of the Charlie & Mouse early readers, among others) frequent spry, eye-pleasing illustrations, a mix of black-and-white and color, spot art and full-bleed section openers. Atinuke's introductory note describes living in Wales in "a roundhouse built of straw and clay in the woods. It was a life of magic, and of mud," both on display in this engaging and memorable chapter book.

Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2024

(2) 4-6 After months of unusual seismic activity, Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980. The catastrophic results included a thick cloud of ash, debris, devastating mudslides and floods, and more than fifty deaths; the event permanently altered the mountain and the surrounding landscape in Washington State. In a dramatic narrative, Barone tracks the efforts of a devoted team of scientists to observe and record what was happening -- and predict when, if ever, it might happen again. The volcano did, after all, have a history of periodic eruptions over the past several hundred years, which lived in the memory of the Indigenous inhabitants of the region. As the fateful day grew closer, the mountain increasingly drew visitors, creating a dilemma for public officials who wanted to discourage tourism but also provide some degree of freedom for residents and loggers. After the eruption, the book segues into wilderness survival as Barone follows various groups of campers trying to escape the aftermath, while the concluding chapters provide an update on Mount St. Helens today. Barone's engaging narrative contains a wealth of detail and a large cast of characters, but the information is carefully organized into brief paragraphs and short chapters, propelling readers through a story with equal parts science, history, and action. The front matter includes a couple of maps and a list of characters, while an author's note and bibliography are appended.

Reviewer: Jonathan Hunt | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2024

(2) K-3 I Like to Read: Comics series. Cepeda, creator of many excellent first-step beginning readers (I Hop; I Help; I Dig), offers a comic for more experienced readers. "What could go wrong?" a father asks his son while packing the car for a camping trip. Well, for starters, the campground is full, but the pair makes the best of a less-comfortable campsite down the road. When it turns out -- "Uh-oh" -- that Dad forgot the tent poles, they take the opportunity to sleep under the stars. Mostly minor setbacks (skunks, rain) force them to enjoy the experience they're having instead of the one they'd expected. Digital illustrations in aquas, greens, and browns have an ink-and-watercolor feel that suits the low-stakes outdoor adventure. Readers will need some fluency to navigate multiple word bubbles per page, multiple speakers, and compound and multisyllabic words with a number of sound blends and linguistic quirks. Most of the language is likely to be familiar, though, and the illustrations provide support for less common words, such as the night sky full of stars around "Venus...and the Big Dipper...and Capella...and Polaris." When father and son get home, Mom asks how the trip went, and the child shouts, "Everything went wrong...It was great!" A solid lesson for all of us on how to navigate life's little disappointments.

Reviewer: Adrienne L. Pettinelli | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2024

(2) K-3 Illustrated by James Burks. Bugs and bad weather and bears...oh, my! At first, camping seems like a "fun and easy" vacation. For a family of inexperienced campers, however, disaster lurks around every pine tree. Luckily, the frustrated family (portrayed in the illustrations with a variety of skin tones) stumbles upon Campingland, a bright, plastic-y, climate-controlled paradise, complete with an abundance of modern conveniences and politely accommodating animatronic forest friends. "Not like our first camping trip," whose details are revealed in a series of zany flashbacks that parallel the Campingland activities. Dyckman's straightforward and energetic prose makes for an engaging story. The use of speech bubbles with a large, playful font for the dialogue encourages interactive participation for emerging as well as more proficient readers. Burks's digital illustrations are full of humorous details. The candy-colored vistas of Campingland are in sharp contrast to the gray-weather outdoor scenes of the real campsite. But that first trip, it turns out, was the one full of "real family memories," and now the family is "a lot more prepared" to give outdoor camping another try and to "just roll with it...no matter what." (Uh-oh.)

Reviewer: | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2024

(2) K-3 From a red cabin in a forest, the young protagonist calls for her dog. "Peppermint! Where is that pesky pup? I'm going out to look for Peppermint! You come too." In the panel-style illustrations that follow, the girl takes readers on a tour of her favorite features of the forest, while the cagey Peppermint comments from a circle inset on each spread. When there are reminiscences (about the time, for instance, when Peppermint came home with a snout full of porcupine quills), the action appears as childlike drawings in the girl's sketchbook (Peppermint: "Maybe not my finest hour"). A mix of the informative and the homey, the narration encompasses elements of history and geology (how millennia earlier, glaciers dropped erratic boulders), botany, zoology (the time a coyote chased them home and they later returned to find its den), and folk wisdom (how to make a whistle out of an acorn cupule), in a visually inviting and intellectually stimulating way. When the naughty Peppermint is at last reunited with her owner, they're rewarded with one of the girl's life-list ambitions: the sight of an elusive fisher regarding them silently from high in a tree. The back matter includes a note from the author about his home and a map showing the Adirondack Mountains, sidebars about porcupines and fishers, and a list of "a few good forest books."

Reviewer: Anita L. Burkam | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2024

(2) YA Twelve-year-old Becca hadn't planned on being dragged to a ranch in Montana for her summer vacation, and with wildlife warnings and a spotty internet connection, Far Away Ranch is a far cry from the resort spa she'd been promised. Hoping to salvage her summer, Becca befriends Jon, a boy her age whose father works on the ranch. With a notebook full of his great-grandmother's tales about legendary outlaw Pearlhandle Pete, Jon is determined to track down Pete's hidden bounty, rumored to be on nearby Mystic Mountain. Becca and Jon team up, along with two other kids staying at the ranch, to solve a generations-old mystery involving a treasure map, bank heists, ghosts, and family secrets. The stakes are raised when a smarmy social media influencer lets on that he plans to unearth Pete's fortune first, and by any means necessary. Becca and Jon embark on a thrilling, and sometimes haunting, journey that will change both their lives. They also open up to each other, Jon missing his late mother and great-grandmother and Becca worrying about her parents' separation and her middle-school friendship woes. With themes of family, grief, and loss, Fox has crafted a multifaceted mystery novel with even more to the story than clues and riddles.

Reviewer: Hill Saxton | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2025

(1) K-3 Illustrated by Brian Floca. "In Michigan country on a two-rut road along a stream called the upper South Branch of the Au Sable River," a young boy sits on his father's lap in a red Jeep, two sets of hands on the steering wheel, as they head out on a camping trip. Set in the early 1950s and rooted in Jackson's own boyhood memories, this homage to a moment in time is beautifully rendered and made specific in poetic text and brilliant illustrations of fly fishing, catching brown trout, cooking on an open fire, and trying to spot an owl. But that was last summer, and now winter has come to their Michigan town, a gray-blue world of snow-covered houses with yellow lights; the boy is on his mother's lap, thinking of "Dad now as he drives another Jeep in a far-away war." Floca's stunning yet gentle illustrations in pen, ink, watercolor, and gouache were completed after Jackson's death in 2019 and capture the varied greens of a summer day in the country, the shimmering light on a trout half in and half out of the water, and the eerie moon in a nighttime sky. The effective interplay of text and art makes this slender tale of reminiscence unforgettable.

Reviewer: Dean Schneider | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2024

(2) 4-6 In this gorgeous graphic novel with minimal text, it's an ordinary day as Poppy takes her dog, Pepper, out for a walk, all the while listening to music, scrolling mindlessly through her cell phone. Pepper, spotting a fox, breaks free and runs off into the woods, unplugging Poppy from the digital world and immersing her in the natural one. They encounter another child, who is fully engrossed in the woodland life around them. Poppy returns to the woods the next day, and the day after that. Nature walks become routine, and Poppy begins to notice the birds, plants, and sounds all around. She tells her mom -- who, in grieving her own mother's death, can't seem to get off the couch -- about her adventures when she gets home. The illustrations ("drawn in Biro, painted using inks and tweaked in Photoshop") portray nature in moody sepia tones that challenge viewers to use their imaginations to fill the pages with color. In the first chapter, the text asks: "What does the wild speak?" This question is explored throughout the story, and Kurimoto's detailed illustrations capture the essence of a walk through the woods; depictions of flora and fauna bring the sounds of the woods (including the wild "morning chorus") and movements of new buds to life, along with the layered emotions that nature can evoke. Readers are reminded that in an increasingly connected digital world, reconnecting with the natural world just outside of our doors can provide joy and healing.

Reviewer: Gabi K. Huesca | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2024

(1) K-3 Illustrated by Jennifer K. Mann. Manley offers a child's point of view of a day-long hike up a mountain (identified in the back matter as the South Sister in Oregon's Cascade Mountain Range). Each stage of the hike is described in a rich, telegraphic three-line haiku poem, beginning with a blazing sunrise. Readers follow along as the child swats away mosquitoes, passes a rushing stream, trudges through the snow, munches trail mix, reaches the summit, and heads back down and to the campsite for bedtime: "trying to sleep -- / what mountain will I climb / next?" The economy of words in the haiku form fits the way a child might think and particularly seems to suit the exercise of describing a demanding hike while actually in the midst of one. Mann's mixed-media illustrations work perfectly in tandem with the haiku narration, alternating perspectives -- featuring the landscape and the views, or the child's close observations, or the family on the move. Her cartoonlike characters pop against the natural setting, especially the child protagonist in an orange hoodie and green pants. Back matter includes information about the history and geology of the region, hiking tips, a visual index, a list of resources, and a note about haiku form, which debunks the idea that English-language haiku must follow a 5-7-5 syllable pattern.

Reviewer: | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2024

(2) 4-6 Poised between novel and information book, this story features Samantha, an eleven-year-old wildlife enthusiast who finds joy and excitement in a neglected natural area she christens Winghaven. An anxious new kid in town, she has to cope with a school bully and overly busy parents. Such conventional middle-grade plot elements pale beside crisp, detailed descriptions of the natural world -- the particular mating flight of mourning doves, the ingenious sand traps of the antlion, a close-up of a muskrat lodge: "The mother muskrat reached out and pulled a plant to her mouth with one tiny, four-fingered black hand, drawing it to yellowed teeth." Samantha and her new pal Bram, a photographer, brave the challenges of ticks, poison ivy, the slog of data collection, and adult cynicism to organize a campaign to save Winghaven from property developers, using a data-based argument involving the essential relationship between milkweed and the monarch butterfly. Samantha's field notebook of observations and sketches provides a parallel narrative and could certainly inspire young citizen scientists and activists. Back matter includes "Notes for Young Naturalists," with book recommendations and links to such projects as the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project.

Reviewer: Sarah Ellis | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2024

(2) 4-6 This survival novel is set in the awe-inspiring Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks. Owen, Vivian, and Amy (two tweens and an eight-year-old) plan a late-summer overnight trip alone in the wilderness. Sisters Vivian and Amy are exploring their home state of California, and their cousin Owen is visiting from the East Coast. Their grownups camp nearby -- they believe the kids' experience on their own will do each of them some good. When an earthquake triggers a rockfall and their path back to the adults is blocked, the resourceful and determined children must take an uncharted path to safety. The cousins use their impressive skills and knowledge (they are excellent at food rationing, first aid, and more) as they encounter wildlife, volatile weather, and treacherous heights. Moments of excitement are interwoven with heartwarming scenes of bonding and introspection, as the trio gives one another "trail names" and has deep conversations about embracing the real world, fears around new beginnings, moving forward from trauma, and the power of love and nature to heal: "[Owen] felt this amazing mix of things, all at once: happy and sad and alive." The plot -- told in the third person and never too harrowing -- is fast-paced and rich in setting. Sights, sounds, and smells are vividly delineated, creating a picturesque backdrop to center the cousins' journey and its transformative effects.

Reviewer: Elisa Gall | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2024

(2) 4-6 After the death of her father and the subsequent loss of their house, Jerry (almost twelve) and her mom drift from small town to small town, her mom finding work in motels because they accommodate Jerry's wheelchair. The latest motel, the Slumbering Giant, should be no different, only there are stories of ghosts and of people going missing, and a radio station broadcasts strange messages in the middle of the night. All of this is fascinating to Jerry and her imaginary pocket-sized dragon, Paul, until her mom, picking up extra work duties overnight, goes missing, and then Jerry, Paul, and new friend Chapel go on a hair-raising quest in the dark, mysterious woods. Netz's debut novel is part thrilling adventure in a fight against "demons," part mystery about the secrets hidden in the woods. It's also populated by an endearing cast of characters whose close relationships help carry them through strange encounters with monsters and mythical creatures. This unusual fantasy's casual inclusion of disability makes it stand out; Jerry's identities as Jewish and as a wheelchair user are well integrated into the story. Though she recounts previous experiences of discrimination from peers, nobody significant in her life doubts her capability or heroism -- and her wheelchair refreshingly proves to be an asset in multiple parts of the tale.

Reviewer: | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2024

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Stef Murphy. Freya and her mum arrive at a countryside log cabin suffused in gloomy blue with snow falling in the darkness. Mum tells her that "Dad loved this old place...He used to say it was magical," but Freya feels that the cabin is cold and empty with "just the two of them." Freya ventures outside with her sled and encounters, and follows, a friendly white fox. As the fox prances, "coloured sparks flew up from the snow." The fox pulls Freya on the sled, "sending frosty fires spiralling into the starlit sky" before it vanishes. Murphy's mixed-media illustrations show the night sky exuberantly shot through with the yellows, pinks, and whites of the northern lights, thin lines delicately and realistically outlining such natural elements as pine trees. Freya returns to the cabin, and the blues now look dazzling as she and Mum watch the sky and then sit together in a cozy nook with colorful touches such as stars hung over the window seat. Over the inviting fire is a picture of the family, including Freya's dad, as mother and daughter cuddle together over a photo album. A brief author's note reveals the story's connection to the Saami myth from Finnish Lapland of fire foxes creating the northern lights. This tender story combines mythology with an empathetic and spare narrative of loss and remembrance.

Reviewer: Susan Dove Lempke | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2024

(2) K-3 A chaotic household tries to reset by heading out for a forest hike. It's hard to enjoy the serenity of nature, though, when no one will help Mom, Grandpa keeps telling old "worn-out" stories, toddler Willa won't stop fussing, and dog Oni is all worked up. Least cooperative of all is older sibling Smudge, who stubbornly responds to Mom's request for good behavior, "Absolutely I will NOT!" Smudge continues to complain while wandering off -- only to get the entire family lost. Pray depicts the group's less-united moments with empathy instead of judgment and gives Smudge the opportunity to make amends for earlier transgressions by using memories of the day's rocky start ("And here! The berries I threw!") as landmarks to guide them out of the woods. "Maybe being lost together makes us sort of found, too," muses Smudge. Pray uses watercolor inks and colored pencils to contrast the family members' frazzled disconnect from one another with the beauty of the outdoors; the jewel-tone foliage becomes more vibrant and defined as the family grows closer. An ultimately cozy portrayal of a day that begins as memorable for the wrong reasons, only to end with Smudge's loved ones learning to find their way -- together.

Reviewer: Ed Spicer | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2024

(2) YA Fifteen-year-old self-dubbed Ash is a passionate environmentalist who is contending with their gender identity. The last person Ash felt connected to was Grandpa Edwin, a recluse who spent his final years living in a secret cabin somewhere in the woods of his Northern California ranch. So when Ash learns that their family is selling the property, they beg to visit one more time, with the intention of locating the cabin and leaving civilization behind forever. Accompanied only by their dog, Ash uncovers the hidden site and quickly establishes a routine of journaling, foraging, fishing, and hiding from search helicopters. But like many survivalists, Ash discovers that there is no real escape from yourself. It takes a terrifying encounter with a bear and the threat of wildfires to bring Ash out of the forest to claim a new identity, one that includes joining a student environmentalist group in addition to newly adopted they/them pronouns. Wang (The Prince and the Dressmaker, rev. 3/18) has updated the classic survival story for today's socially conscious and gender expansive teens with this thoughtfully wrought graphic novel that pays loving homage to treasured titles such as Hatchet and My Side of the Mountain. The soft earth-toned palette, along with the borderless page layouts, beautifully evoke both Ash's inner and outer landscapes, while the meticulous illustrations of Ash's tools and foraging practices will delight detail-oriented readers.

Reviewer: Jennifer Hubert Swan | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2024

(2) 4-6 Because her mother is in the late stages of a high-risk pregnancy, Ava has been sent to stay with her grandparents at their cabin on a lake. In her state of worry, Ava persuades herself that the fates of her mother and her about-to-be-born twin brothers depend on various secret bargains that she makes and on rituals she performs, including the successful rearing of two baby robins. An initially annoying neighbor kid provides ballast to her adventures. Barillaro convincingly captures the kind of magical thinking that results from deep distress and lodges his story firmly in an eleven-year-old's consciousness. For example, Ava saves a woodpecker's feather as a talisman: "Maybe keeping it made her weird, but maybe she had always been weird and didn't know it until right then." The writing is clear, unpretentious, and particularly rich in details about boating, fashioning homemade noodles, digging for worms, performing life-saving techniques during a water emergency, how to cope with a power outage, and confusion about whether administering CPR counts as kissing (i.e., heroic or ick?). Delicate watercolor decorations on each page enhance the gentle, slightly otherworldly feel of the text. A fine, original example of the "summer at the cottage" middle-grade novel trope.

Reviewer: Sarah Ellis | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2023

(2) 4-6 Survival Scout series. This humorous and informative comic-format guide showcases all things survival in the great outdoors. After getting lost while hiking and later abandoned by her exaggeratedly incompetent grown-up brother (he gets chased away by a bear), protagonist Scout is left alone in the wilderness. She has no communication devices and only half of the gear she needs, but she is determined to pull through. Straightforward narration documents Scout's planning and behavior as she tends to her most immediate priorities of shelter, signals, water, and food. As she confronts each challenge (how to light a fire, use a compass, etc.), readers gain access to her decision-making processes and her persistence and problem-solving skills when tasks don't immediately go as planned. Each survival scenario is presented with tension, but none verges on scary or stressful. A silly cast of talking critters (especially a friendly skunk) lightens the tone, offering clarifications and lots of laugh-out-loud jokes. The thick-lined, brightly colored illustrations are jam-packed with diagrams, labels, and other instructions akin to what one would see in a survival handbook; a variety of layouts and visual perspectives allows for readers to focus on the facts and soak in the beauty of the setting. An appendix includes information on knot-tying, Morse code, first aid, bear safety, skunk scent remedies, and going to the bathroom; resources for further reading; and an author's note.

Reviewer: Elisa Gall | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2023

(2) 4-6 Illustrated by Levi Pinfold. Beginning deceptively blandly, this tale soon slips into the uneasiness of horror and brain-teasing mystification. Best friends Hex and Tommo head to the woods to play on the rope swing over the creek. En route, little Sascha insists on joining them; through the boys' rough play, she ends up with a broken arm. Afterward, Hex's confused emotional response alienates Tommo and enrages Maria, Sascha's older sister, who beats Hex up. So far, so ordinary...but in the forest is Missus, a "short, jolly" woman and her huge dog, Leafy. Wouldn't you like to get revenge on the one who hurt you? Missus asks both Hex and Maria, separately. "We will simply persuade the world to forget them...your world will heal, reshape itself around the hole." Before he can decide, Hex himself disappears, preempted by Maria's choice. Thus we begin again in a new reality: off to the woods with his buddy Jayce is Tommo, who neither quite recalls nor quite forgets having had a best friend named Hex. "He could remember remembering, but couldn't remember exactly what he'd remembered about this other, missing kid." In this new world things are disconcertingly different from or disconcertingly resonant with Tommo's memories. Harrold's (The Song from Somewhere Else, rev. 5/17) creepy tale takes off with this altered world, uncanny in its innocuous but distressing changes ("Mum used to keep cactuses, but now there's not a single cactus in the house," Maria cries); that unsettling sense of the uncanny swells to out-and-out terror as Tommo makes his own visit to Missus. Pinfold's chiaroscuro-esque, surreal illustrations raise the stakes on the crone from Disney's Snow White: this isn't for the timid.

Reviewer: Deirdre F. Baker | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2023

(2) YA Former best friends Celine and Bradley are now enemies and academic rivals. When they both jump at the opportunity to participate in a wilderness competition with a scholarship attached and end up on the same team, they are forced to work together to achieve their individual goals. They also work through what tore them apart in the first place while realizing that there could be more to their feelings. In her debut YA novel, British romance writer ­Hibbert offers an entertaining, laugh-out-loud tale featuring memorable Black characters. The alternating first-person narration of the England and Scotland–set story allows for introspection and reveals the nuances of the multifaceted protagonists. Popular jock Bradley is bisexual and lives with obsessive-compulsive disorder, which the author includes without centering or treating as problematic. Celine, struggling with ­abandonment issues related to her father, can be abrupt and emotionally closed off but is also a compelling and amusing character. Along with a constellation of well-drawn secondary players, Bradley and Celine's skillfully written romantic banter make this an engrossing rom-com.

Reviewer: Monique Harris | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2023