Boney

I don’t know about you but whenever my children leave the house you can 100 percent bet they will come home with some form of nature in their hands. Tree branches, rocks, feathers, even interesting clumps of dirt make it into our backyard and sometimes our washing machine. Cary Fagan’s new picture book Boney, illustrated by Dasha Tolstikova involves an interesting treasure from the woods and what to do with it.

On her walk in the woods with Scoot and her dad, Annabelle finds a bone. She’s not sure where the bone came from but wants to bring it home. After a good clean up, Boney becomes part of the family until a dream makes Anabelle rethink keeping Boney as part of the family.

This story will speak to all the adventurers out there. Children love to go exploring, whether it's in the woods or their own backyards and everything is a treasure. Cary Fagan taps into that innate childhood quality with this kind and gentle story that will have readers thinking about their relationship to nature and those treasures they bring home.

What’s wonderful about this story is that parents and educators can use it before, during and/or after a walk in nature to talk about living and nonliving things as well as what we can collect and what should be left behind. I really enjoyed how Annabelle’s dream made her rethink the proper place for Boney. It’s an opportunity to talk about death and how living things die but then become the nourishment for the future plants and animals. It's a very circle of life story.

Dasha Tolstikova’s watercolour and pencil crayon illustrations are bright and vibrant. I love how the illustrations are broken up into big two page spreads and intimate vignettes throughout the story. They are quirky and thought provoking just like the text.