This home-and-back-again journey story belongs to Evergreen, a wide-eyed squirrel who lives deep in Buckthorn Forest. Evergreen has an extended listing of fears, together with however not restricted to germs, loud noises, heights, swimming and thunderstorms. When her mom asks her to journey by means of the forest to take soup to Granny Oak, Evergreen responds, “I can’t do it!” But her mom insists (”I do know you’re afraid, however I consider you are able to do it”), so Evergreen places on her scarf and heads out.
In an period of image books that always include sparse textual content, Evergreen stands out for its prolonged, detailed prose. Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell treats readers to an epic story in six enumerated elements, crammed with energetic dialogue and hand-lettered onomatopoeia. “SKREEEE-EEE!” and “GRRROOOAAARRR!” go the forest creatures who frighten Evergreen on her journey. In one remarkably spine-tingling second, a red-tailed hawk named Ember swoops down towards Evergreen, picks her up “with razor-sharp talons” and soars into the sky. Cordell gives a dramatic, close-up view of the scene as Evergreen and one other animal run towards the reader, the hawk simply behind them, its majestic wings exceeding the sides of the unfold.
Fortunately, Ember simply wants Evergreen’s assist to take away some painful thorns after an unfortunate encounter with a bramble. “I . . . can do it,” Evergreen whispers, a self-directed pep discuss that turns into her chorus all through the story. With every creature she meets, Evergreen faces one of her fears with braveness (and deep breaths and trembling palms), and he or she prevails each time—even when she meets “the Bear,” whose id is a gratifying shock.
Cordell’s world constructing is immensely satisfying, and Evergreen is filled with entertaining textual and visible particulars. Evergreen delivers Mama’s “magic soup” in an empty acorn with a screw-on cap; her tattered scarf is pink like one other well-known woodland meals supply courier; and earth tone borders that appear like tree branches body many vignettes. Cordell drops a quantity of hints to a sequel, together with a pleasant map beneath the mud jacket and one other supply request from Evergreen’s mom towards the story’s conclusion. Readers could be so fortunate.
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