Wake Up, Sloth!

This tall-format paper-over-book depicts a three-dimensional pop-up forest, where a tiny sleeping sloth is tucked away in one of the trees. The tranquility of the forest is disrupted when bulldozers arrive: “The forest trembles. Machines with terrible iron teeth uproot the trees.” The sloth, however, continues to sleep, as the trees diminish in each spread, until only the sloth’s tree remains. But a man arrives to plant new seeds, and green sprouts spring up thanks to a pull-tab. The forest and the sloth return (a bit too quickly) in a triumphant finale. Deforestation is an unusual topic for the pop-up genre, to say the least, but readers should appreciate the elegant design, subtle details, and hopeful message. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)