Their wildest dreams

CHILDREN OF THE FOREST, by Matt Myers
OUTDOOR DRAWING, by Jairo Buitrago; illustrated by Rafael Yockteng; translated by Elisa Amado
OUR FORT, by Marie Dorléans; translated by Alyson Waters

One summer, when I was a single mom raising my second and fourth graders in Brooklyn and looming large for the next few weeks without childcare, my friend Catherine and I rented a farm in upstate New York for a month. She brought her 9 year old twins and we let the kids explore the woods while we worked. We gave them a loud whistle and generous boundaries – the distant stone wall, the winding stream, the adjacent field – and sent them off to go wild.

Alone in the woods, while also letting their imaginations run wild, what they actually did was create order. They called their country Mimoss. They built houses, ran businesses, named and mapped landmarks. They held controversial town rallies on the Flat Rock and issued dire warnings about the dangers of the Evil Snakey Forest, which loomed menacingly on all sides. This threat, staggeringly amplified, was crucial to the thrill of the experience, as in three new picture books in which children let their imaginations run wild in the great outdoors.

In Matt Myers’ Children of the Forest, the wild beasts, a dragon and an intruder threaten a boy and his sister, who declare themselves children of the forest, raised by wolves. The boy, steeped in wilderness stories, bravely protects his sister, even as they “tumble on the brink of starvation.” He guides her in the art of survival as they forage for food, ward off dangerous animals and set up camp for the night. There is a pleasant tension between text and image, where what we are told is at odds with what we see. Older kids will love the joke: the beasts are the house cat and dog, the dragon is a leafy tree with twiggy teeth, and the intruder is the children’s mother.

But the mother’s visit breaks the spell for the girl, who with a cry of ‘Mama!’ affect the comfort and safety of the home. Left alone in the deepening twilight, the boy succumbs to his vivid imagination and runs back to the house, where we see the children in their bunk beds. Myers’ soft, nostalgic pencil-and-watercolor drawings in muted greens and mauves contain details meant for adults (the dozing dad reads Thoreau), but there’s also plenty for kids to explore as they invent their own backyard adventures.

“Drawing Outdoors”, by Jairo Buitrago, illustrated by Rafael Yockteng, is a somewhat mind-boggling story that begins in a school between two mountains in “the middle of nowhere”, where several students of different ages arrive on foot from all directions and a dog pees on a bush. We learn that the school “has almost nothing. A blackboard, some chairs.” But it does have a playful teacher who leads the kids outside to explore the landscape, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the dinosaurs they’ve studied. The children draw what they see. A Brontosaurus follows the curve of a hill, a Stegosaurus hides behind boulders.

It’s a fanciful blend of art, science, and nature, except for the slightly confusing detail of a student holding a tablet, which he holds up to photograph the scene. What should we make of this? The camera does not lie: we can clearly see the dinosaurs on its screen. And what about the fact that despite the repeated mention of the school’s lack of resources, the children are equipped with easels, canvases, binoculars and that odd tablet? Maybe it’s a point about imagination transcending technology, creativity transcending material reality, or maybe it’s a nod from the illustrator to the digital medium in which the drawings for this book were created – drawings of inviting landscapes and curious children rendered in a striking palette, with just the right amount of detail.

There’s much to see in this story (also available in Spanish) of an extraordinary school day, especially when the wind picks up, the kids crouch and a Tyrannosaurus rex crashes through the trees. The brave younger children stay and draw; two frightened older kids run back to school, giving their budding romance a chance to blossom.

While “Children of the Forest” plays with words that tell us one thing and pictures that tell us another, and “Drawing Outdoors” uses simple words to describe extraordinary sights, “Our Fort”, by Marie Dorléans (a winner of the 2021 DailyExpertNews/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Award for “The Night Walk”), could be read without words at all. Reminiscent of Japanese woodcuts in composition and line, the beautiful illustrations tell the story of three friends who visit a fortress they built in the woods on the other side of a meadow.

In the opening spread we see the children tying their shoelaces and their sandals, and through the open door we see the dirt road they are going to take. This is a spectacular bookmaker. We turn the page and find them a little further down that road, leaving behind a wistful younger sister perched on the fence. An adult’s only suggestion is a neighbor’s shadow hanging a sheet on a clothesline, and we know we’re going on an adventure.

Everything about the drawings propels us forward in the book: the pencil lines of the rippling grass as the children take a shortcut through a field; the winding paths they leave in their wake; the clouds billowing above these now small-looking (yet obvious) children as they ascend a hill. The drama comes with a storm. Strong winds lift the children off their feet, and you get the feeling that they might be enjoying their fear. As the storm subsides and the blue sky returns, we can almost smell the damp field, and we can’t help but share the children’s relief when they discover their fortress is still standing.

It’s a simple story. Still, I can imagine “Our Fort” has a big impact on a child – a child who would one day go into the woods with friends and spend weeks of a happy summer building a fortress and establishing order. , all the while thrilling at the prospect of sudden storms, wild winds and evil snake forests.

Sophie Blackall is a two-time winner of the Caldecott Medal. Her next picture book, ‘Farmhouse’, will be published in September.