Taking as her text a sentence from Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle--"The land is one great wild, untidy luxuriant hothouse, made by nature for herself"--Yolen lyrically compares a house to the rain forest ("...no roof in the green house,/only the canopy of leaves") and notes its animals ("the quick-fingered capuchin/make their slow-quick ways/from room to room...a splash of golden toad,/a lunge of waking lizards,/a plunge of silver fish") and their sounds. Regan makes an outstanding picture-book debut with lush full-bleed spreads rendered in gouache, with luminously diffuse light, exquisitely detailed wildlife, and decorative forms--close to the picture plane--that recall Leonard Weisgard's art. Unlike the plethora of contrived or sentimental books on the subject, this one is simplicity itself--eloquent and effective. (Picture book. 4-9)
