Books like Maple
By Lori Nichols
For the kid who talks to trees, collects leaves in their pockets, and treats the backyard like a best friend, Maple feels like a mirror. Gentle, seasonal, quietly tender.
A boy travels north with his grandfather, Moshom, to see the trapline where Moshom grew up, asking again and again, "Is this your trapline?" as he imagines the life his grandfather once lived there.
A family leaves the comfortable, familiar house they love and moves somewhere new, discovering that home is really the people you share it with.
A joyful look at the natural world welcoming a new baby, as the moon pulls the tides, rain falls, and word of the coming birth spreads from animal to animal across the whole earth.
A snowy little one gets a big, soft bed for winter nights and can't help jumping, jumping, jumping on it — even though Mommy says the bed is for sleeping, not bouncing.
Twelve poems follow one family through a full year, from January sledding to July fireworks to autumn leaves underfoot, finding wonder in each month's particular light and weather.
A parent shares a string of tender wishes for a child — to find wonder in flying birds, to know love as vast and constant as the moon loves the sky.
A six-year-old boy spends his days in his grandfather Luis's towering garden, learning bird names, playful expressions, and reading and writing from a grandfather who never had schooling of his own.
After their father dies, six-year-old Marvel, her seven siblings, and their mother move into a run-down tar-paper shack deep in the Wisconsin woods and slowly turn it into a home.
A boy named Eli grows up on his grandparents' farm, learning to love the barn, the fields, and the river that surround him — then shares those same places with his baby sister, Sylvie.
A boy and his father fish before dawn at a Minneapolis pond, not for sport but for food, while stories of a different pond back in Vietnam quietly surface between casts.
A gentle tour through nature at dusk, as mother animals — owl, fox, whale, and more — each tell their babies just how deep and boundless their love runs.
Off a small island, a young boy sails an old boat, riding the shifting tides and catching wants and wishes until a change at sea reshapes what home means to him.
