Book Review: Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature

Outside your Window: A First Book of Nature

Written by Nicola Davies and Illustrated by Mark Hearld

Published by Candlewick Press in 2012, ISBN 978-0-7636-5549-5

Grades PreK – 6

Book Review

Whether you live in a rural, suburban, or urban setting, there’s a wondrous world of nature right “outside your window.”  Biologist and author Nicola Davies invites you to explore this world year round with her seasonally organized collection of nature poems. Davies’s exceptional ability to use descriptive and figurative language, in particular similes and metaphors, makes the content come alive and the science facts and concepts more comprehensible to her child audience. Her writing is both beautiful and functional. The poems in various forms explore the cycles, patterns, and sensory experiences of flora and fauna in each season, such as this description of an apple:  “Fresh from the tree, / the apple sits in your hand, / cool and round, / and streaked with sunset colors.” The beauty in this collection is not limited to Davies's words. Mark Hearld’s illustrations rendered in mixed media more than live up to the publisher’s description as “breathtaking.” Reminiscent stylistically of late nineteenth and early twentieth century children’s book illustrations, the images blend collage, woodblock print, pen and ink, and painting, creating rich pastoral scenes that beg multiple viewings.  With its oversized trim, thick pages, fascinating images, and engaging text, this book makes the impossible possible – Davies and Hearld allow us to hold the miraculous natural world around us in the palm of our hands.

Curriculum Ideas

Shared Reading. Keep this wonderful volume close at hand to read these poems aloud throughout the school year. Select children’s favorites to rewrite on sentence strips to post in a pocket chart. Keep the lines of the poem whole on the sentence strips or cut them into individual word cards so that students can reassemble the poem from memory using letter/sound or sight word cues. Invite children to illustrate the poems.