Tree Hole Homes

June 1, 2022
Preschool-Grade 3 Stewart asks children to imagine approaching a towering tree with a hole in its trunk that's large enough for them to slip inside. What if they lived there? How would it feel? This picture book introduces 15 animals living in tree holes that they have either found or made for themselves and their young. The dual text broadens the age range of the book's potential audience, offering a brief commentary for young children and additional facts for somewhat older kids. The simpler, large-print text offers a brief phrase of a continuing sentence on each double-page spread, while individual paragraphs in small type provide more-detailed information on the animals discussed. Hevron's stylized illustrations--digital collages of acrylics and markers on wood--depict the critters and their homes using a limited but effective range of colors. The back matter provides information on each of the featured animals, which include eastern bluebirds, raccoons, tree frogs, bobcats, and little brown bats; most live in North America. A useful addition to classroom units on animal homes.

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August 15, 2022
Thinking outside the nest, here's a gallery of arboreal residents, from tree frogs to birds and bobcats. Stewart invites readers to join her in visualizing some of the animal residents known to use hollowed-out spaces in tree trunks and imagining what such a home would be like. A solitary fisher, for instance, would find calm and quiet in such a hole. Not so a mother raccoon with a passel of cubs. A well-placed hole makes a good nesting site for wood ducks and eastern bluebirds, a daytime refuge for a nocturnal Liberian tree hole crab, a "nighttime nook" for a black spiny-tailed iguana, or even a cozy place for an American black bear to bed down for the winter. Working with acrylic and marker on wood to create suitably suggestive surfaces and backgrounds, Hevron creates intimate close-ups of stylized but easily recognizable creatures peering out or in cross-sectional views nestling down. She also depicts a light-skinned young explorer slipping into a big trunk's ground level cavity to read and think about how such found places provide temporary escape from the outside world's distractions. The author adds notes about each animal's preferred habitat, diet, and other details both in the narrative and at the end. (This book was reviewed digitally.) A lofty mix of nature facts and rumination. (selected sources, further reading) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2022
Stewart follows a familiar pattern (see Sibert Honor Book Summertime Sleepers, rev. 7/21) of introducing a basic feature of animal life and then comparing and contrasting the ways in which animals adapt to these fundamentals. This time up, she's examining homes in trees, first by asking readers to identify with the inhabitants ("What would it be like to live inside a tree?") and then describing characteristics of such homes. For example, some homes are large (for barred owls) while others are small (deer mice). Some homes are built by the inhabitants (black-capped chickadees) while nature constructs others through, for example, tree-splitting lightning strikes (for little brown bats). Digitally rendered collages on wood panels depict the animals' routine activities as natural and authentic, perfectly matching the matter-of-fact, informative text. Appended with facts about the animals (including a memorable "fun fact" for each that ranges from the speed they travel to how they handle poop); a bibliography; and suggestions for further inquiry. Betty Carter

(Copyright 2022 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2022
Stewart follows a familiar pattern (see Sibert Honor Book Summertime Sleepers, rev. 7/21) of introducing a basic feature of animal life and then comparing and contrasting the ways in which animals adapt to these fundamentals. This time up, she's examining homes in trees, first by asking readers to identify with the inhabitants ("What would it be like to live inside a tree?") and then describing characterstics of such homes. For example, some homes are large (for barred owls) while others are small (deer mice). Some homes are built by the inhabitants (black-capped chickadees) while nature constructs others through, for example, tree-splitting lightning strikes (for little brown bats). Digitally rendered collages on wood panels depict the animals' routine activities as natural and authentic, perfectly matching the matter-of-fact, informative text. Appended with facts about the animals (including a memorable "fun fact" for each that ranges from the speed they travel to how they handle poop); a bibliography; and suggestions for further inquiry.

(Copyright 2022 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)