Happy Hearts

For those who stand or sit with stillness in their yards, open meadows, shady forests, or next to cheerful streams, nature will send rewards. She sends hummingbirds to sip sweet nectar from flowers in your gardens.  She sends two scampering red squirrels, so caught up in fun, they nearly run right into your legs.  They chatter at you as they find sanctuary in nearby trees.  They see you as a challenge.  You see them as a gift.

Our animal friends carry on their lives as they have for generations, adapting to changes and honing their instincts.  When we see them with happy hearts, and intent on frolic, they are also becoming their best selves.  Play in the Wild: How Baby Animals Like to Have Fun (Roaring Brook Press, June 30, 2020) written and illustrated by Lita Judge is a companion title to her Born in the Wild: Baby Animals and Their Parents and Homes in the Wild:  Where Baby Animals and Their Parents Live.  It's a lively exploration of animals and their antics.

Pounce, leap, chase, and slide.
Young animals like to play.

In the first of nine sections pertaining to animals and their play, we are given lively examples of head butting, running in circles, wrestling, and winter fun.  The otters, red river hogs and red pandas are seen embracing moments of joyful abandon.  In the subsequent eight sections, more specifics are noted.

So animals are aware that advances are playful rather than fighting, they have techniques for inquiry.  Kelp held in the mouth of a swimming sea lion pup is an invitation to another pup.  Play is a means for locating a meal.  Arctic foxes jump, jump and jump some more in anticipation of leaping up and coming down to catch food scurrying beneath the snow.  Various forms of play abide by certain rules.  Some things are allowed, others are forbidden.

In some animal communities play strengthens the group.  In gray wolf packs, youngsters master skills through play which will later allow them to work together as adults to survive as a single unit.  Some of their play continues for the rest of their lives.  Play is practice for attracting and keeping a mate.  Many males will fight each other as adults, so their pretend fights as babies are a prelude to securing a mate.

If during play, one animal baby hurts the other baby, they have learned to say they are sorry.  If a gorilla bite hurts another gorilla, the injured party will stop until the other one comforts them.  Play builds stronger bodies, thus insuring a greater chance of endurance and continuity.  In conclusion readers are told, animals do play for the sheer joy of it.  You'll know this is true if you ever notice a raven and a coyote doing something extraordinary.  The raven dives at the coyote.  The coyote chases the raven.  If the coyote is not fast enough, the raven waits.  Aren't animals wonderful?


Using spirited language replete with action verbs author Lita Judge acquaints readers with animal play.  For each portion there is a short introductory sentence or two.  The capers of three other creatures, in detail, are offered in support.  Lita Judge is well aware of her intended audience for this book, selecting those facts most likely to remain with her readers.  These pieces of information many times coincide with the play of children.  Here is a sample of a section title, its introduction and one of the animals.

Play can be practice for finding a mate.

Male animals often have to compete with one another
to breed.  The competition can be fierce, so many young
animals develop important skills through play-fighting.

Nubian ibex kids spring vertically in the
air, jump on each other, and knock heads.  These
rounds of "King of the Mountain" may prepare
male billies for the challenges they face in
adulthood.  Adult male ibexes compete for a 
mate by crashing their long horns into each
other like battering rams.


Your heart will fill with happiness simply by looking at the open and matching dust jacket and book case.  The baby elephant splashing through the water, birds flapping to avoid her, is learning to celebrate when goodness is presented.  To the left, on the back, along the top three otters slide down a snowy slope.  Two are starting on the left and all we see of the third is the back legs and tail on the right.  At the bottom center of the image, a fourth otter is staring at readers as if to ask us to join in their sliding.

A dark bird's egg blue covers the opening and closing endpapers.  On the initial title page, two baby cheetahs climb over a patient parent.  On the verso and title pages a double-page picture features a grassy scene with a pale blue wispy sky.  On the right a wolf cub playfully grasps a tail in its mouth. 

Lita Judge's paintings span two pages, full pages and smaller three images are grouped on two pages.  Lightly brushed backgrounds or white heighten her exquisitely detailed depictions of each of the animals and the settings in which they are placed.  She brings readers close to the activities giving us a sense of being in the moment.  All the animals are in motion.

One of my many, many favorite illustrations is on a single page.  It takes place in a snowy setting.  Here two red pandas are wrestling.  On the left, the one is rolling on the ground, legs and arms moving to keep the other one away.  The one on the right is standing upright on its back legs.  Its arms are outstretched.  It is ready to leap on its playmate.  Their faces signal their merriment.


Readers will enjoy every single moment of the information, conversations, and artwork in Play in the Wild: How Baby Animals Like to Have Fun written and illustrated by Lita Judge.  It's a delightful new nonfiction book by a gifted person clearly dedicated to presenting the animal world with meticulous care to her readers.  At the close of the book are five pages of more information about each of the twenty-seven animals.  This is followed by a glossary of twenty-three words in which readers might not be familiar.  There is a list of written sources and recommended websites.  I highly recommend this for your professional and personal collections.  You could pair this title with Play Like An Animal!: Why Critters Splash, Race, Twirl, and Chase by Maria Gianferrari and illustrated by Mia Powell.

To discover more about Lita Judge and her body of work, please follow the link attached to her name to access her website.  Lita Judge has accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.  At Macmillan's website you can view multiple interior images.


Even though educator Alyson Beecher is taking a much-deserved hiatus from her blog, Kid Lit Frenzy, please take a few moments to view previous blog posts about the 2020 Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge.

From The First Breath

You may forget the exact time of day.  The details will fade from your memory.  The way you felt as you watched the puppies being born remains.  Over the course of hours, days and weeks, the relationship of the mother and her new children is fascinating to watch.  How she and they interact in the outside world is a montage of images, increasing the feeling of being witness to one of nature's marvels.

Naturalist, author and artist Lita Judge's new title, Born in the Wild: Baby Mammals and Their Parents (Roaring Brook Press, October 21, 2014) discusses many of the adaptations new babies face in our world.  We travel to varied habitats on six of our seven continents.  New and familiar, prevalent and endangered members of the mammal family are featured.

A baby is born.

This is the first of nine single sentence headings.  Following each, two pages highlight how different mammals, usually three, address each area of their newborns' lives.  Let's see how similar or unlike us they are.

I'll bet you will never look at a squirrel the same way again when you realize baby polar bears are the same size when they are born.  Rather than be food for large cat predators, at least two African newborns are ready to run in hours.  Now threatened grizzly bear cubs drink their mother's milk for two to three years.

I wonder how many of you have walked by a fawn hidden in the grass, staying still for protection for days after birth.  Even as an adult I like the idea of a herd of musk oxen surrounding me if danger is near.  Imagine how safe their calves must be.

Homes in woven grasses, tunnels underground or hollowed trees gave babies needed shelter.  The pouches and backs of marsupials are nature's baby strollers.  Extended families act as teachers and offer protection.

Elephant trunks, cougar tongues and chimpanzee hands offer cuddly comfort.  The fun of play leads to required acts for survival.  Learning by watching and doing can take mere minutes or as long as ten years depending on the skill and the animal.  At any time or any place on our planet, mammals are being born and seeking survival.


With the reading of each nonfiction title written by Lita Judge admiration grows at her skill in presenting knowledge about her subject, as if in conversation she reveals captivating details.  It's a gift to supply information by placing it in the proper perspective so readers can see the connections between nature and their world.  It's as if we have traveled with her to each of these animals' homes, observing them with their young.  Here is a sample paragraph.

A musk ox calf is strong enough to endure harsh Arctic
storms but she is defenseless against hungry wolves.  With
sharp horns, snorts, and stamps, the entire herd forms a tight,
protective circle around the little one, guarding against attacks.

On the dust jacket and book case elegant portrayals of a mother giraffe nudging her curious baby and a small orangutan with closed eyes on the back of their mother convey the essence of each relationship.  Plain opening and closing endpapers are the same color as Born and Wild on the front which in turn is a shade similar to the orangutans' fur.  An inviting design and layout has already captured readers' interest.

On the title page and each of the nine introductory pages a double page depiction of a mother or family with the newest members brings us close to the selected activity.  The pages in-between each of these frame smaller memorable images with white space.  Lita Judge's realistic drawings enhanced with watercolor are simply stunning as she brings you into the intimacy of the moment.

It's very hard to pick a favorite illustration but one of them is the interior visual of the older orangutan with the baby on its back.  They are together among bunches of branches.  The parent with out-stretched arms is showing how to take the leaves forming them into a nest.


Born in the Wild: Baby Mammals and Their Parents written and illustrated by Lita Judge is nonfiction at its best.  Each illustration elevates the text which informs every single reader.  Judge has supported her work with meticulous research as evidenced by the list of written and online sources at the book's end. She has included a glossary of eight terms in which younger readers might not be acquainted.  Four pages are dedicated to supplying more information about the twenty-six mammals showcased in this title.  You might like to use this with Robin Page's and Steve Jenkins' book, My First Day.

Please visit Lita Judge's website to learn more about her other wonderful titles by following the link embedded in her name.  Eight images from the book are shown at the publisher's website.  On author Cynthia Leitich Smith's blog, Cynsations, Lita Judge visits for an interview about this title.






Please stop by Alyson Beecher's blog Kid Lit Frenzy to read about the other nonfiction titles chosen by bloggers participating in the 2014 Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge.