Fort-Building Time

October 1, 2017

PreS-Gr 1- This colorful tribute to the perennial childhood occupation of fort-building follows a group of children through the seasons as they use materials at hand to create cozy private spaces. Lloyd uses hyphenated adjectival participles to create a rhythmic description of each season. Winter is "snowball-throwing, scarf-wrapping, sled-pulling, ice-sliding time"-reminding readers that each time of year is a perfect "fort-building" too. Winter's garlanded igloo is replaced by a bedsheet and blanket tent in the woods. It is followed by a driftwood and beach towel lean-to that gives way to a hut covered with branches and leaves, and ends with a near-catastrophe as a pet dog "helps out." Engaging with their natural environment and with one another in the building process, children can also use creativity, critical thinking, and teamwork. Halpin's sweet, detailed watercolor-and-pencil drawings of a diverse group of friends enjoying the outdoors and working together will encourage readers to see the potential in their own environments. Linguistic and narrative parallels reinforce a sense of movement and activity and create opportunities for word work. At a time when more children look to screens for their fun, this book might remind them to look around instead. VERDICT Use in the classroom for fun project-based learning, or at home with your sheets and couch cushions. Recommended.- Lisa Lehmuller, Paul Cuffee Maritime Charter School, Providence

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 15, 2017
A celebration of fort-building play throughout the year.A diverse cast of children with different skin colors and hair textures builds forts with a wide variety of materials in winter, spring, summer, and fall. "WINTER is a...dog-snuggling, cocoa-drinking, snowman-making, fort-building time!" the book opens, and illustrations flesh out the action with said diverse characters and specific materials--in this case, an Asian boy skis past a white girl and a black girl playing near a snow fort festooned with evergreen garlands and pine cones hanging from red string. New fort-building materials are introduced with the changing seasons, and additional characters join in the play, but neither text nor illustrations ever develops a narrative. Instead, text and art simply depict the children's fort-building activities (some quite spectacular) until the final pages depart from the seasonal structure and depict children grappling with a fort that falls apart and then needs rebuilding. "Every season has its own secret-dreaming, cozy-keeping, hush-listening, fort-building time," reads the text that introduces those pages, perhaps inviting readers to dream up their own fort-building activities, no matter the season. Playful reading fun. (Picture book. 3-5)

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January 1, 2018
Each season brings wonderful activities, including "snowball-throwing" in winter, "daffodil-hunting" in spring, "sandcastle-shaping" in summer, and "leaf-chasing" in fall. And throughout the year, it's always "fort-building time." Lush, detailed watercolor and colored-pencil illustrations finished digitally capture the allure of building forts outside in nature.

(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)