Pictures by Gary Allen

I’m an amateur naturalist. I picked up the hobby in my early 30s and, I hope, have passed my love for nature on to my kids. Keeping a book like this in our little library can certainly help.

One Day in the Woods is about a girl named Rebecca who spends from dawn until dusk in the woods searching for “the wizard of the woods.” That’s what her Uncle Luke called it, at least, the strange Ovenbird whose antics are as wild as anything she could find in the forest.

Rebecca begins her search high up in the canopy of trees, because after all, she’s looking for a bird isn’t she? Author Jean Craighead George uses this little tidbit as a ploy to introduce the top five layers of plant life, a great lesson for kids to learn: canopy, shrub, field, litter, and soil. Where might the Ovenbird live? Rebecca wonders. She’ll spend her whole day searching the layers to find it.

Throughout her exploration, Rebecca meets all kinds of animals, from flying squirrels to Downy Woodpeckers. As an amateur birder myself, I loved reading about those sightings and felt like I was with her there, trying to figure out the species.

The artwork in this book is clear but monochromatic, which isn’t a good fit for a book on the beauty of nature. I get that Scholastic had to print on its standard paper, and perhaps all the original artwork was black-and-white too, but still, I wish the illustrations were as colorful throughout the book as it was on the cover.

All in all, though, this is a great book that teaches curiosity and naturalism, not to mention the lesson on how much adventure a kid can have from just one dawn-to-dusk time period. Rebecca reminds me a bit of Theodore Roosevelt as a young man, and how naturally curious I hope my own kids will be.

Rebecca’s adventure also reminds me of the Bio-Blitzes that iNaturalist puts on sometimes, where residents of a certain geographical section try to observe as many natural sightings as possible within a 24-hour time-span. It’s a great exercise and one that all kids should try at least once in their childhoods!

©2020 E.T.