The Keeper of Wild Words
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A touching tale of a grandmother and her granddaughter exploring and cherishing the natural world.
Words, the woods, and the world illuminate this quest to save the most important pieces of our language—by saving the very things they stand for.
When Mimi finds out her favorite words—simple words, like apricot, blackberry, buttercup—are disappearing from the English language, she elects her granddaughter Brook as their Keeper. And did you know? The only way to save words is to know them.
• With its focus on the power of language and social change, The Keeper of Wild Words is ideal for educators and librarians as well as young readers.
• For any child who longs to get outside and learn more about nature and the environment
• A loving portrait of the special relationship that grandparents have with their grandchildren
For children who love such books as Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature, And Then It's Spring, and Finding Wild.
Brooke Smith is a poet and children's book author. She lives in Bend, Oregon, at the end of a long cinder lane. Brooke writes daily from her studio, looking at the meadow and many of the wild words she cherishes.
Madeline Kloepper is a Canadian artist with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Major in Illustration from Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Her work is influenced by childhood, nostalgia, and the relationships we forge with nature. She lives in Prince George, British Columbia.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Intended to memorialize the dozens of nature words acorn, minnow, violet, wren cut from a recent edition of The Oxford Junior Dictionary, Smith's picture book follows an intergenerational duo on a hunt to find various words' real-world signifiers. "Words disappear if we don't share them when we talk," Mimi says to her granddaughter Brook; dubbing her granddaughter "The Keeper of Wild Words," Mimi invites her on a scavenger hunt ("Bunches of VIOLETS spread underfoot"). The list is long, and the two smell, taste, and observe their way through the outdoors. Digital and mixed-media illustrations in saturated tints by Kloepper show the duo in a garden and the woods beyond. Readers may not understand this story fully until they read the author's note by Smith, strangely placed at the end of the book; until then, it scans more like a story of aging or dementia. Like The Lost Words before it, this may offer a springboard for debate about the comparative value of words. Ages 5 8. (Mar.)
