Nest

by Jorey Hurley, Jorey Hurley (Illustrator)

Overview

Simple text and beautiful illustrations follow a baby bird through the seasons in this sweet tale now available as Classic Board Book.

From birth, to first flight, to a new friend, the first year of a bird’s life is full of activity and wonder. Artist Jorey Hurley pairs vivid, crisp artwork with simple, minimal text—often just one word per spread—to create a breathtaking, peaceful chronicle of nature and life’s milestones.

This book is now available as a Classic Board Book, perfect for young readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442489721
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books
Publication date:	02/04/2014
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	40
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

Jorey Hurley studied art history at Princeton, received her law degree at Stanford, and studied design at FIT. She worked as a textile designer for Hable Construction in New York City and is now based in San Francisco, where she lives with her husband and their two small children. Nest, her debut, was called “stunning” in a starred review from School Library Journal. Fetch, her second book, was called a “delight” by Publishers Weekly in a starred review. She is also the author of Every Color Soup, Skyscraper, and Beehive. Visit her at JoreyHurley.com.

Editorial Reviews

Each scene illustrates a single word…making it good practice for young readers. The rich, flat colors and stylized pictures…are certain to please aesthetically-minded children and their adults.

The New York Times Book Review - Sarah Harrison Smith

11/18/2013
Newcomer Hurley lets her bright, clean illustrations do her storytelling, limiting the text on each page to a single, evocative word. The first spread—“nest”—accompanies two robins guarding a precious blue egg. Like silk-screened images, Hurley’s digitally created artwork represents the birds and the trees they live in with flat, sharply delineated areas of color on matte pages; airy white space in the compositions duplicates the freedom in which the birds live and soar. Although the forms are stripped down, some small details are preserved, like the intricately woven twigs of the nest and the sparks of light in the birds’ eyes. “Grow” shows the robins bringing worms to their nestling amid a bower of blossoms; throughout, Hurley celebrates the changing seasons. Although it suggests itself as a bedtime book, the arc of the story is not day moving into night, and the page that says “sleep” is not the last one—with an “Awake,” the next spread shows the rising sun. Robins meet other robins and start again where they began: “Nest.” A handsome, disciplined debut. Ages 3–7. Agent: Laurie Abkemeier, DeFiore and Company. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 01/01/2014
PreS-Gr 1—In this stunning debut, we meet a pair of robins and their egg. We watch the parents incubate and hatch the egg and teach the baby bird to survive and fly. Seasons change, colors change. The family faces danger, but ultimately finds safety and comfort. This story is told primarily through the crisp illustrations that have a light, airy quality. The narrative includes only fifteen words, one on each spread, which adds to the dramatic impact: "Nest…warm…hatch….grow…jump…." The conceptual space between each page turn invites readers to thread together the story and imagine each step in the bird's journey. The illustrations evoke the eloquent simplicity of a Japanese woodblock print while the frontispiece depicts clusters of robin's eggs, reminiscent of clouds in a Georgia O'Keefe painting. Every page resonates with a vision that is both ethereal and quotidian. The birds are depicted naturalistically and an author's note includes factual information about robins and their nests. Nest's beauty and originality will stand up to countless re-readings.—Jess deCourcy Hinds, Bard High School Early College, Queens, NY

School Library Journal

2013-11-18
Hurley's penchant for textile design is clearly apparent in this debut picture book. Japanese-style, flat, colored illustrations depict scenes in the life of a family of American robins, from hatching, feeding, learning to fly and social interactions among birds through changing weather and foliage. Even the endpapers are part of the story, showing simple robins' egg shapes. Unfortunately, this style of illustration is inherently static, and its paucity of detail is unlikely to hook children's interest, especially where wildlife is concerned. The too-empty spreads lack real interest or substance, presenting the birds and trees as designer shapes rather than living entities. A single word placed on each spread offers a short gloss on each illustration, but beyond the obvious progress through seasons, the relationships among the words are frequently ambiguous. Readers are more or less left to tell the story on their own, belying the book's apparent simplicity. The author's note describing the life cycle and behavior patterns of the American robin is necessary, as it gives information mostly lacking in the rest of the book. This superficial robin's-eye view of a year does not really get off the ground. (Picture book. 2-5)

Kirkus Reviews