I’m Afraid, Said the Leaf

Prolific Canadian author Danielle Daniel has tapped into her Indigenous heritage to produce this lovely picture book. Using a lilting call-and response form, the text focuses on the interconnection between animals and plants in a northern temperate habitat. A leaf falls to earth, but its expression of fear is quelled by reassurance from the tree that dropped it. A nestling is afraid of falling from branch to ground, but the wind promises to keep it aloft if it takes flight.

The book has been designed in a very deliberate way. It is of a large rectangular size, and the heavy paper stock gives it weight. Each animal’s worry is expressed in few words starkly printed on a plain white page and that page faces a richly-coloured illustration of the speaker. When we turn to the next spread, we find out who or what is ready to solve the problem in two broad pages full of detail.

I’m so cold, said the horse.

We see a mopey-looking equine standing disconsolately in a bubbling turquoise stream.
Then:

I will warm you, said the sun.

The horse’s expression changes to one of calm and pleasure as it races through a flowery field under a lemon sun. The horse’s cavorting companion is a red-shirted child sporting flying hair and a broad smile. (That child appears in a number of other places in the book too.) A bear, a squirrel, a bee and other creatures find the same kind of comfort in some other place or thing.

Daniel has illustrated her own texts in the past, but here she passes the brush to award-winning artist Matt James. Working with acrylic on Masonite, James has used all the tones in his palette to fill the pages with scenes from nature. The animals, themselves, are often elongated and somewhat abstract in their rendering, but there is no doubt that that wolf is a wolf and the bear a bear. Understandably, he has drawn more from comic books than the forest in lending personality to the bored mushroom who is rescued by a mouse who wants to play. The style of line and the scumbled mixture of colours reminded me somewhat of the work of English illustrator John Burningham.

In classic children’s literature fashion, the book ends with the falling of the dark.

I’m so lost, said the wolf.

We will guide you, said the stars.

I’m so tired, said the child.

Close your eyes, said the moon.

The repetitive cadence of the book may prove too drawn out to make the book a suitable storytime choice for the very young, but kindergarten and primary teachers talking about ecology and other adults reading with children one-on-one will delight in introducing the natural world with this handsome offering.