Where Once There Was a Wood

Where Once There Was a Wood. ISBN 0-8050-3761-6. Denise Fleming. 1996. Caldecott Honor. Ages 4-8. Nonfiction Picture.

Where Once There Was a Wood, is a nonfiction picture book by Denise Fleming. In this story many different animals are visited in their natural habitat, which include woods, a meadow, and a creek. Fleming goes through the many animals that made this wood their home and the different things they do in the woods to live. She uses rhyming words at the end of each stanza, which makes this story sound very poetic. Unfortunately, the lines end with the unveiling of a housing development that now stands where the woods once did. After the story ends, there are a few more pages dedicated to explaining how to make your own backyard a natural habitat for animals to thrive in. The illustrations match the animals she is writing about on each page, with the pages made to look like pages of a scrap book, which makes sense because the story is written as the author is reminiscing about a once existing wood. The colors used to paint the animals in their natural habitat are very natural, themselves, consisting of many greens, browns, and oranges. The background is made to look like recycled paper.

This is a great book that emphasises the beauty of nature and the importance of preservation. Any student will feel sad to learn that the homes of these animals have been destroyed by a housing development, and hopefully excite them about preserving nature. I would use this story in the classroom to introduce a unit on nature. We could go on a nature walk after the story and spot some beneficial traits of our own schoolyard that would encourage or help animals to live in their natural habitat. We could also set up our own backyards in a way that would be welcoming to animals, using some of the suggestions given by Fleming in the back of the book, and report back to the class on what it is we did at home.