The woodland is alive and busy with soon to be parents as they build and prepare their homes for their families.
This book shows the reader how the woods are full of home builders of all types. We see that they come from different areas of the woods: the water, the air, the tall grass, or under the earth, but all have a job to do.
We follow these builders as they get to work to ready their homes. We watch them burrow, and dig, nibble, and gnaw to prepare their homes in the woods.
We see how important it is that each of these animals has a home. How their home protects them warm when it is cold out, keeps them dry when it rains, keeps them safe from danger while they sleep.
We watch as each builder is blessed with a family in their new homes. We see how they grow and play and love each other in the safety of their home.
We learn we all share one big home, Earth.
Bajaj does a fantastic job of sectioning off each phase of the woodland animal building process with a header prompting a question to the reader. “Do you see the builders work?” This keeps the reader engaged as they are now on the lookout for what the animals are doing in the following pages. Each question serves as a natural transition into the next building phase.
She also does a fantastic job with the rhyme scheme and syllable count. She understands what it means to write a rhyming book. It has the flow that readers have come to expect from a simple ABCB rhyme scheme.
Mulazzani’s illustration skills are on full display in this book. The animals are simply fantastic. But her use of space is what sets her illustrations apart from similar books in the genre. On one page, she can somehow give the feeling of both wide openness in one regard, and crampedness on the other. She can show the wide
She is able to capture all the tones and hues that the woodland provides. Colors that you would miss on a trek through the woods if you weren’t looking, but don’t worry because Mulazzani was looking and she has put them on full display in this book.
This book is a wonderful book for teaching young readers about the different animals that live in the woodland ecosystem, the way certain animals may prepare their homes, and even different parts of the woodland.
This book is best enjoyed by readers between the ages of 3 and 5.
I would recommend this book, if for nothing else, the illustrations.
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