Can You Hug a Forest?

by Frances Gilbert, Amy Hevron (Illustrator)

Overview

Celebrate the beauty of the natural world in this meditative picture book encouraging mindfulness, gratitude, and love for the environment—featuring illustrations painted on actual wood.

Can you hug a forest? Of course you can. First you hug the air: open your arms, lift up your chin, and breathe in all the way down to your toes. Then you hug a leaf and a flower and a trail and a stream and all the other wondrous natural elements that make up a forest. Take every chance to soak in your natural surroundings and be grateful for nature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781665903554
Publisher:	Beach Lane Books
Publication date:	05/02/2023
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	644,187
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Frances Gilbert is a children’s book editor and the author of the picture books Can You Hug a Forest?; Go, Girls, Go!; Too Much Slime!; and I Will Always Be Your Bunny. Follow her on Twitter at @GoGirlsGoBooks.

Amy Hevron is an illustrator, graphic designer, and children’s book author. She is the illustrator of several children’s books including The Tide Pool Waits by Candace Fleming, Tree Hole Homes by Melissa Stewart, and Can You Hug a Forest? by Frances Gilbert, as well as her own Tiny Habitats series, Dust Bunny Wants a Friend, and The Longest Journey: An Arctic Tern’s Migration. Visit her at AmyHevron.com.

Editorial Reviews

03/20/2023

Gilbert (Too Much Slime!) answers the title’s question with a set of instructions. Beginning with the answer (“Of course you can./ You’ll need a forest, though”), the second-person address accompanies images of a doll-like, stylized child with light brown skin and scribbly pigtails. Hevron (The Tide Pool Waits) paints the child on wooden panels, alongside flowers, birds, and trees outlined with thick, oil-pastel-like strokes. Having provided a forest (“Here is one”) and two arms (“Here are two. One. Two”), Gilbert continues in onomatopoeic how-to lines: “First, you hug the air./ Whisha, whisha, it says,/ whispering secrets from the sky.” Curling light blue lines represent breezes; a red-crested woodpecker flies above the child. “Just open your arms,/ lift up your chin,/ and breathe all the way down to your toes.” There are as many ways to hug the forest as there are parts of it, and every element—a leaf, a flower, a forest trail, and more—gets a spread of its own that reveals its distinctive sounds and textures. Each one is personified with merry, pin-dot features that make the forest look like a toy shop, and the child reacts actively to each one in this sensorially focused encounter with the natural world. Ages 4–8. Illustrator’s agent: Kirsten Hall, Catbird Productions. (May)

Publishers Weekly

2023-02-08
A youngster deeply in touch with nature explains how to hug each part of a forest.

The titular question may seem confounding at first, but the tiny narrator, who has brown skin and two coiled hair buns, breezily explains that OF COURSE you can hug a forest. All you need is a forest (check) and two arms (“Here are two. One. Two”). But you can’t hug a whole forest all at once. You need to hug each part individually. In order to hug the air (which whispers, “Whisha, whisha”), “Just open your arms, / lift up your chin, / and breathe in all the way down to your toes.” The meditative tot explains how to hug a leaf, a flower, and even a stream. But how do you hug a trail? “Just open your arms, / lean into each footfall, / and let the ground guide you, / there and back again.” The lulling, quiet text washes over readers, following a repetitive structure (“How do you hug…?” “Like this”) that brings comfort and stability. Hevron’s cozy illustrations are painted directly on a wooden canvas, with wood grain peeking through delightfully in places. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Plenty of opportunity for stillness and nature appreciation, wherever you may be. (Picture book. 2-6)

Kirkus Reviews