#233 of 1001 · March 21, 2021

Let’s take a walk through a world that might appear perfectly ordinary...until you peer just a little bit closer. This is On Bird Hill by Jane Yolen and Bob Marstall, released by the Cornell Lab Publishing Group to benefit educational and community programs sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Yolen constructs a simple yet elegant rhyme (based on the Appalachian cumulative folk song “The Green Grass Grew All Around”) that leads from the narrator to a tree, to a trunk, to a limb, to a twig, to a nest, to a bird, to an egg, to a chick, and finally back to the narrator. Perhaps taking this circularity as his cue, Marstall produces a countryside containing a handful of ever-so-slightly peculiar details. The narrator sets out from a little hilltop house, a pool of water still reflecting the stars of the early morning sky. The trees feature rope-like helical trunks, curling tendrils, and little red berries, an unexplained cutout in the earth revealing a tangled network of roots far below. Once the chick emerges, a miniature replica of the narrator’s house can be seen within the cracked egg, complete with a starry sky on the inside of the shell. Finally, all roads seem to lead through the grassy fields to a pool of water that (despite the bright daylight) reflects the stars of early morning—or is it perhaps a hole looking down into a pit of midnight below? #bird #hill #tree #nest #egg #stars #night #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbooks #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookillustrations #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks