  | Full Text Reviews: Booklist - 04/01/2019 *Starred Review* This love letter to America’s national treasures is an important, informative invitation to experience and explore. Author-illustrator Turk (Heartbeat, 2018) offers spreads of well-known parks (Yosemite, Yellow Stone, Mesa Verde) and some lesser-known parks (Biscayne Bay, Olympic, Big Bend). Animals such as bison, bobcat, chipmunk, and elk, as well as physical features of the land (glaciers, mountains, rivers, volcanoes) are pictured. Lyrical free verse tells readers that the national parks are preserved for everyone, and when we visit them, we are home. Home, Turk says, is “a memory / of footsteps and wingbeats, / of sunrise and sunset . . . / a memory carried / through wind and rain, / echoing in canyons / carved way down deep / in the heart of the earth / and in our hearts alike.” Margin-to-margin illustrations use pastels on black paper to create appealing views of select national parks; the name of the park featured on those pages is printed in the lower corner. Back matter includes an author's note, a map of all the national parks in the U.S., and a listing of the 27 featured in the book. Also included is a brief history of the national park system and a call to protect the parks. - Copyright 2019 Booklist. School Library Journal - 06/01/2019 PreS-Gr 3—Turk takes readers on a visual journey through 25 national parks with the effect of perusing a travelogue. Each landscape spread features a different park subtly named in the bottom corner that sometimes includes wildlife or human visitors. The illustrations, rendered in pastel on black paper are, with a few notable exceptions (the Arches, Everglades, and Biscayne), predominantly dark. Touches of yellows, blues, and greens lighten most pages, but the cumulative effect is one of darkness. Endpapers depict a sunrise and a starry night sky; most pages in between have a dawn, dusk or nighttime feel. Back matter includes a U.S. map with all 58 National Parks indicated, author notes, and further information about the featured parks and animals. Unfortunately, the print on the "More About" page is so small only the hardiest of young readers might believe it was meant for them. The text is indeed a classic ode with the refrain, "you are home." Turk first addresses the creatures you might encounter in the parks, turns his attention to "the child in the city," "the child on the farm," and then immigrants and "ancestors," touching upon the irony that many of these lands were home to Native Americans before the "stars and stripes took them as their own," only to preserve the land as "a place for all." VERDICT Rather than sparking young readers' interest in our National Parks, this earnest but abstract picture book will be most appreciated by those who are already familiar with them.—Lynn Van Auken, Oak Bluffs School, MA - Copyright 2019 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Loading...
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