Can You Hug a Forest?

Gilbert (Too Much Slime!) answers the title’s question with a set of instructions. Beginning with the answer (“Of course you can./ You’ll need a forest, though”), the second-person address accompanies images of a doll-like, stylized child with light brown skin and scribbly pigtails. Hevron (The Tide Pool Waits) paints the child on wooden panels, alongside flowers, birds, and trees outlined with thick, oil-pastel-like strokes. Having provided a forest (“Here is one”) and two arms (“Here are two. One. Two”), Gilbert continues in onomatopoeic how-to lines: “First, you hug the air./ Whisha, whisha, it says,/ whispering secrets from the sky.” Curling light blue lines represent breezes; a red-crested woodpecker flies above the child. “Just open your arms,/ lift up your chin,/ and breathe all the way down to your toes.” There are as many ways to hug the forest as there are parts of it, and every element—a leaf, a flower, a forest trail, and more—gets a spread of its own that reveals its distinctive sounds and textures. Each one is personified with merry, pin-dot features that make the forest look like a toy shop, and the child reacts actively to each one in this sensorially focused encounter with the natural world. Ages 4–8. Illustrator’s agent: Kirsten Hall, Catbird Productions. (May)