A spider is a “never-tangling dangling spinner / knitting angles, trapping dinner.” A tree frog proposes, “Marry me. Please marry me… / Pick me now. / Make me your choice. / I’m one great frog / with one strong voice.” VanDerwater lets the denizens of the forest speak for themselves in twenty-six lighthearted, easy-to-read poems. As she observes, “Silence in Forest / never lasts long. / Melody / is everywhere / mixing in / with piney air. / Forest has a song.” The graceful, appealing watercolor illustrations perfectly suit these charming poems that invite young readers into the woodland world at every season.
Learning becomes fun for kids with this counting book about the forest habitat. Amazing artwork will inspire children in classrooms and at home to appreciate the world around us! Follow the tracks of ten woodland animals but . . . uh-oh . . . watch out for the skunk! Children learn the ways of forest animals to the rhythm of "Over in the Meadow" as they leap like a squirrel, dunk like a raccoon, and pounce like a fox. They will also count the babies and search for ten hidden forest animals. Cut paper illustrations add to the fun in this delightful introduction to a woodland habitat. Once again, Marianne Berkes makes learning fun. Kids will hide, graze, and pounce as they imitate and count the animals. Like Over in Australia, the cut-paper illustrations will inspire many an art project. Plus Marianne provides tons of ideas for activities and curriculum extensions about forest animals, literature, and writing. Teachers and parents, as well as kids, are the winners with these books. Backmatter Includes: Further information about the forest and the animals in the book! Music and song lyrics to "Over in the Forest" sung to the tune "Over in the Meadow".
As a young man, American Louis Sarno heard a song on the radio that gripped his imagination. With some funding from musician Brian Eno, he followed the mysterious sounds all the way to the Central African rain forest and found their source with the Bayaka Pygmies, a tribe of hunters and gatherers. Nothing could have prepared him for life among the Pygmies, a people legendary for their short stature and musical wealth. Sarno never left. Considered outwardly lazy by some, scrounging, and near alcoholic, the Pygmies Sarno met had seemingly lost all desire to hunt or make music. Only after he had lived with them for some time (on a diet of tadpoles) was he allowed to join them in the rain forest where they still in relative harmony with nature. There Sarno experienced the extraordinary beauty and spiritual sophistication of their culture and the supreme importance of music as the principal means by which they communicate with the rain forest and its magical spirits. Over the decades Sarno has recorded more than 1,000 hours of unique Bayaka music. He is a fully accepted member of the Bayaka society and married a Bayaka woman. Permanently changed by his experience and captivated by a Bayaka culture, In Song from the Forest Sarno has chronicled his attempt to protect the fragile existence of the Pygmies in an increasingly destructive world. Once, when his son, Samedi, became seriously ill and Sarno feared for his life, he held his son in his arms through a frightful night and made him a promise: “If you get through this, one day I’ll show you the world I come from.” Now the time has come to fulfill his promise. In a new major documentary film, Sarno tells the story of the Bayaka as he travels with Samedi from the African rain forest to another jungle, one of concrete, glass, and asphalt: New York City. Together, they meet Louis’ family and old friends, including his closest friend from college, Jim Jarmusch. Carried by the contrasts between rainforest and urban America, and a fascinating soundtrack, Louis‘ and Samedi‘s stories are interwoven to form a touching portrait of an extraordinary man and his son. SONG FROM THE FOREST is a modern epic film set between rainforest and skyscrapers.
Lyrical, intense, and foreboding, this is a remarkable first novel. Set in the Dark Ages, it tells of a year in the life of a remote village, the labors of its inhabitants, their struggles and fleeting pleasures in the face of threatening forces that surround them. The forest dominates their lives--in it lurk the fierce riders who come to rob, kill, and rape, and from it they evoke a being, half-man, half-clay, for their defense.
Fans of Aaron Becker’s Caldecott Honor winner Journey will love this utterly enchanting wordless picture book in which two friends follow a young fox deep into the woods and discover a wondrous and magical world. When a young girl brings her beloved stuffed fox to the playground, much to her astonishment, a real fox takes off with it! The girl chases the fox into the woods with her friend, the boy, following close behind, but soon the two children lose track of the fox. Wandering deeper and deeper into the forest, they come across a tall hedge with an archway. What do they find on the other side? A marvelous village of miniature stone cottages, tiny treehouses, and, most extraordinary of all, woodland creatures of every shape and size. But where is the little fox? And how will they find him? Stephanie Graegin’s oh-so-charming illustrations are simply irresistible, and readers young and old will want to pore over the pages of this delightful fantasy adventure again and again.
My father says there has been a forest here for over a hundred million years," Jeannie Baker's young protagonist tells us, and we follow him on a visit to this tropical rain forest in North Queensland, Australia. We walk with him among the ancient trees as he pretends it is a time long ago, when extinct and rare animals lived in the forest and aboriginal children played there. But for how much longer will the forest still be there, he wonders? Jeannie Baker's lifelike collage illustrations take the reader on an extraordinary visual journey to an exotic, primeval wilderness, which like so many others is now being threatened by civilization.
Lesia Ukrainka was a Ukrainian poet, prose writer, and dramatist of universal importance. Her first collection of poetry, On the Wings of Song (1893), established her reputation as an accomplished lyrical poet. This collection contains her often-quoted poem "Contra spem spero" (Hope against Hope)—an expression of her remarkable strength of character and determination to face down a severe illness (tuberculosis of the bones) that afflicted her from an early age and caused her untimely death at the age of 42. Lesia Ukrainka wrote her masterpieces in the genres of drama and dramatic poetry, to which she turned her attention in the early 1900s. Many of her dramas were set in a variety of historical epochs, from those of ancient Greece and biblical Palestine to early modern Spain, eighteenth-century Muscovy, and the first Puritan settlers in America. Her most acclaimed play, The Song of the Forest (1911), is a symbolist fantasy drama in verse that evokes the neo-romantic concept of "living nature." Written in Kutaisi in the Caucasus two years before her death, it reflects Lesia Ukrainka's intense nostalgia for her native western Ukrainian region of Volhynia and her deep appreciation of the folkways, beliefs, and mythology of its countryside, where she grew up. In The Song of the Forest, Lesia Ukrainka expressed her deepest idealistic outlook, focusing on the contrast between good and evil, loyalty and betrayal, and highlighting the ideal of harmony between humans and nature and the importance of being a free, independent spirit. Patrick John Corness's meticulous translation of the play and his introduction and explanatory notes provide Anglophone readers with an opportunity to acquire a closer appreciation of this classic of Ukrainian literature.
