Where Once There Was a Wood by Denise Fleming

Where Once There Was a Wood by Denise Fleming

A powerful poem and stunning, handmade-paper art encourage children to protect nature.

Where once there was a wood,
A meadow and a creek . . .

Inspired by events in her own backyard, award-winning author and illustrator Denise Fleming creates a poignant yet hopeful portrait of our disappearing natural environment. The last pages of the book teach children how to make a more creature friendly backyard, including information about what types of food, trees and flowers attract different kinds of animals. Where Once There Was a Wood also includes an informative bibliography for budding environmentalists, and suggests various projects that families can do together.

Denise Fleming has written and illustrated many children's books, including In the Tall, Tall Grass, Shout! Shout It Out!, and Sleepy, Oh So Sleepy. She won a Caldecott Honor for In the Small, Small Pond. Denise published her first painting in the third grade, when she started taking classes at the Toledo Museum of Art and one of her paintings was chosen to be the cover of a teacher's magazine. She now works primarily with paper, by pouring colored paper pulp through hand-cut stencils. She lives in Toledo, Ohio.