  | Full Text Reviews: School Library Journal - 10/01/2014 K-Gr 4—Who could resist Lyon's invitation to "Make friends/with a path/threading/through woods?" Her tender, lyrical observations of the natural world ("Forest knows leaves,/held out like hands,/cupping sunlight…") are clear, unpretentious, and true. Hall injects some levity by introducing a big red dog to his photoshopped illustrations. Encourage children to keep an eye on the canine's tail traversing the pages! Readers see the forest in all seasons, all weathers, all times of day, from the ground to the treetops scraping the sky. The text rolls deliciously off the tongue, and the furry animals practically beg to be stroked. Simply beautiful.—Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Library, NY - Copyright 2014 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Booklist - 11/15/2014 The change of forest seasons subtly flows forward as an exuberant red dog ties together the days, appearing on most pages—sometimes as just a tail, paw, or nose—as he explores the woods’ nooks and crannies. The prolific Lyon’s prose poetically describes this world along with the dog, dwelling on lists of animals and their yearly activities, while naturally introducing vocabulary: fledge, ripple, burrow, and more. Hall’s illustrations emphasize animal viewpoints, whether it is a bird’s-eye view of a foggy, leafless sea of branches threaded through with a creek, or the yellow-green grass where centipedes wander. The colors of the broad two-page spreads give tone to the passage of time: soft in spring, deep and burnished in fall. A boy trails his pet at the beginning and end, giving the woods some personalized scale. Children will delight in following the eager canine and in identifying the fish, opossum, and deer he spots. This ought to hold its own with other books about the way a year unfolds. - Copyright 2014 Booklist. Loading...
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