Megan Elizabeth Baratta – illustratör

I Begin with Spring weaves natural history around Thoreau’s life and times in a richly illustrated field notebook format that can be opened anywhere and invites browsing on every page. Beginning each season with quotes from Thoreau’s schoolboy essay about the changing seasons, Early Bloomer follows him through the fields and woods of Concord, the joys and challenges of growing up, his experiment with simple living on Walden Pond, and his participation in the abolition movement, self-reliance, science, and literature.The book’s two organizing themes—the chronology of Thoreau’s life and the seasonal cycle beginning with spring—interact seamlessly on every spread, suggesting the correspondence of human seasons with nature’s. Thoreau’s annual records of blooms, bird migrations, and other natural events scroll in a timeline across the page bottoms, and the backmatter includes a summary of how those dates have changed from his day to ours and what that tells us about the science of phenology and climate change.Megan Baratta’s watercolors are augmented with historical images and reproductions of Thoreau’s own sketches to create a high-interest visual experience. The book includes a foreword from Thoreau scholar Jeffrey Cramer, Curator of Collections for the Walden Woods Project.

My backyard is where we play and learn, but it wasn’t always my backyard…Hit rewind on the view out your backdoor as this story zips back in time, showing readers how people, lifestyles, and land have changed over time. My Backyard Used to Be makes history feel current and accessible to young readers—and encourages them to discover what their own backyard used to be.

"A creative and unique way to explore poetry and emotions with young children." - Kirkus ReviewElephant of Sadness, Butterfly of Joy is a collection of twenty-four picture poems that explores the realm of human emotion. Each poem links an animal with an emotion and uses sensory imagery to spark childlike wonder, paint word pictures to ponder, and see the world from a new perspective.Elephant of Sadness, Butterfly of Joy evokes metaphoric thinking in young readers. From the “Mosquito of Worry” and “Snail of Anticipation” to the “Hummingbird of Happiness” and “Lanternfish of Love,” the poems vary in tone—some light, some dark, some humorous, and some serious. The animals represent a diversity of species, including mammals, reptiles, cephalopods, mollusks, fish, insects, arachnids, and birds.Whether hopeful, frustrated, surprised, or content, these picture poems help illustrate the emotional spectrum that encompasses the human experience and bridge a gap in understanding so that children are better equipped to label their feelings.For teachers, parents, and caregivers, the poems open space for discussions about social-emotional learning, which, now more than ever, are needed conversations.