IF YOU LIVED HERE YOU’D BE HOME BY NOW

Briant’s latest, a wordless fable about imperiled nature, spans two generations in colorful panels. A boy reads a book about woodland animals with his dad, then presses a fallen leaf within. He departs in a dream sequence, book in tow, in quest of those animals, meeting an enormous, owlish creature festooned in autumn leaves. The crash of falling trees interrupts their revelry in the teeming forest, as runaway construction encroaches. The illustrations cleverly depicts nature’s waning grip on the boy: The older he gets, the fainter grows his memory of the leaf-creature. Cut to a future of flitting hovercraft in a completely built landscape. The boy’s now a dad, who takes his son camping after the lad’s incidental rediscovery of the animal book. While Dad can conjure the memory of the leaf creature, only his son spies it—though they share a rewarding glimpse of the remaining wildlife. While a few of the many panels don’t smoothly telegraph the action and emotion, the overall effect is crisply resonant. Affecting, and a nice choice for family sharing. (Picture book. 3-6)