Can You Hug a Forest?
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- USD 10.99
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- USD 10.99
Descripción editorial
Celebrate the beauty of the natural world in this meditative picture book encouraging mindfulness, gratitude, and love for the environment—featuring illustrations painted on actual wood.
Can you hug a forest? Of course you can. First you hug the air: open your arms, lift up your chin, and breathe in all the way down to your toes. Then you hug a leaf and a flower and a trail and a stream and all the other wondrous natural elements that make up a forest. Take every chance to soak in your natural surroundings and be grateful for nature.
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Gilbert (Too Much Slime!) answers the title's question with a set of instructions. Beginning with the answer ("Of course you can./ You'll need a forest, though"), the second-person address accompanies images of a doll-like, stylized child with light brown skin and scribbly pigtails. Hevron (The Tide Pool Waits) paints the child on wooden panels, alongside flowers, birds, and trees outlined with thick, oil-pastel-like strokes. Having provided a forest ("Here is one") and two arms ("Here are two. One. Two"), Gilbert continues in onomatopoeic how-to lines: "First, you hug the air./ Whisha, whisha, it says,/ whispering secrets from the sky." Curling light blue lines represent breezes; a red-crested woodpecker flies above the child. "Just open your arms,/ lift up your chin,/ and breathe all the way down to your toes." There are as many ways to hug the forest as there are parts of it, and every element—a leaf, a flower, a forest trail, and more—gets a spread of its own that reveals its distinctive sounds and textures. Each one is personified with merry, pin-dot features that make the forest look like a toy shop, and the child reacts actively to each one in this sensorially focused encounter with the natural world. Ages 4–8. Illustrator's agent: Kirsten Hall, Catbird Productions.
