On Bird Hill
(On Bird Hill and Beyond #1)

First in a planned series (a portion of proceeds will benefit the Cornell Lab of Ornithology), this dreamy story follows a child and his dog on a stroll by the sea. Writing in characteristically well- structured verse, Yolen (the How Do Dinosaurs... series) echoes the story line of the nursery rhyme "The Green Grass Grew All Around," starting broadly ("As I was walking on Bird Hill, / Though it was day, the moon shone still") then narrowing in on a tree, twig, bird, and nest. Inside, the boy sees "an egg, / A little chick, all beak, wing, leg." Marstall (Butternut Hollow Pond) brings a slight Seussian weirdness to the setting--the narrowest of paths swoops around chartreuse hills, while impossibly skinny trees taper into branches capped by yellow, tendril-like flowers. When the chick hatches, the inside of its shell is a world unto itself, a nighttime scene featuring a house that looks like the one the boy calls home. It's a sweetly surreal meditation on the everyday wonders that await in the wild. Ages 3-5. Author's agent: Elizabeth Harding, Curtis Brown. Illustrator's agent: Abigail Samoun, Red Fox Literary. (May)

PreS-Gr 2--Featuring a single poem with a pleasing rhythm, this picture book opens at sunrise with the main character setting off on a walk with the dog. "As I was walking on Bird Hill, /Though it was day, the moon shone still." A fantastical aerial view of a sweeping hilly landscape shows a tiny moon still in the top left corner and the narrator and dog far away on the bottom right. Each subsequent spread presents two more lines from the poem that build on the lines that came before and work together with the art to bring readers closer into the scene. ("And on Bird Hill, I saw a tree.") From tree to trunk to limb to twig, readers are able to zoom in until they find a bird on a nest, and then even closer until, beneath the bird, the baby chick shows through the surface of its egg. Here the focus of the illustration pulls back, and the egg begins to hatch. The spread where the bird breaks through is left wordless, and at this point the book turns, putting the baby chick in charge of observing: "He saw the twig, limb, trunk, and tree, /And then he saw the moon.../...and me, /As I walked down Bird Hill." The book is done in spring colors, and its bright visual design, interesting perspectives, and surprising details offer much to observe and ponder.