Finding Home (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Sarah Simpson's Rules for Living Deborah Stevenson Rupp, Rebecca Sarah Simpson's Rules for Living. Candlewick, 2008 [96p] ISBN 978-0-7636-3220-5$14.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 5-7 When a koala and her baby joey lose their habitat in a brushfire, they must seek a new home. Struggling to carry her heavy baby, the mother ventures forth, finding the nearest edible trees to lie within a human enclave. The curious suburbanites gather around to see animals not usually found in their backyard but try to avoid interfering with the koalas, who finally find a new home range of eucalyptus in which to settle. Loosely based on the adventures of a real koala, the story is quiet but intense, the present-tense, animal-centered narration hushed yet concrete. The book refreshingly eschews portraying humans as saviors or saboteurs, instead making clear through the koala's-eye-view that it's their mere presence in the habitat, no matter how benign their intentions, that's distressing to wild animals. Marks' watercolor, pencil, and ink illustrations are dominated by landscape, tinted in sweeping washes of color, but they effectively foreground the mother and baby; the change from wild to settled areas is subtly flagged by increasingly geometric elements of house [End Page 253] silhouette and road and fence lines. This will likely elicit youngsters' own stories of animal encounters, but it's also a useful entrée into discussion about the erosion of habitats and its effect on the wild. Copyright © 2008 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois