FIRE!

Using insets to identify the wildlife in her well-populated woodland scenes, Godkin portrays a North American boreal forest’s destruction and recovery from a fire caused by lightning. Though that recovery comes on with deceptive quickness—from charred wasteland to verdant meadow in two turns of the page, and back to thick stands of tall trees in two more—the various stages, as well as the affected flora and fauna, are rendered with decent accuracy, and recapped for reinforcement on closing spreads. A good choice for collections needing a replacement or supplement for the likes of Laurence P. Pringle’s Fire in the Forest: A Cycle of Growth and Renewal (1995). (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-8)