by Brenda Boreham
illustrated by Judith Rackham
Strong Nations Publishing, 2023
ISBN 9781771746021
$21.95 (hc), 32 pp, ages 5 – 9
strongnations.com
A Night in Fernwood Forest is a companion volume to Fernwood Forest (2022), which introduced readers to plants and animals that reside in Fernwood Forest. In A Night in Fernwood Forest, we follow the movement of animals that are active after dark—a barred owl, a female cougar and her cub, Pacific tree frogs, a family of raccoons, a deer mouse, moths, mosquitoes, bats, shrews, and snails. Backmatter includes factual notes about the animals introduced in the previous pages, a labelled illustration of a nurse log, and pointers for respectful visits to forest ecosystems. Evocative full-page illustrations bring a sense of the darkness and mystery of nighttime in the forest.
Curriculum Connections: Regular Canadian Teacher Magazine readers will recognize the name of the author of this book (and others in the By Day and By Night Nature Series). Brenda Boreham brings her teaching experience and love of nature to these books, filling them with opportunities for the discovery of interactions between plants and animals in healthy ecosystems. Every page contains a clue about the animal that will be featured on the following page, and the movement of the sun or moon across the sky. Careful readers will notice that there is a numerical component in the introduction of each new species as well. This beautiful book will engage listeners and independent readers and support the science goals in elementary school classrooms.
Review by Diana Mumford.
This review is featured in Canadian Teacher Magazine’s Winter 2024 issue.