Customer Reviews

Secret Place

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"Secret Place" is a beautiful story: through its words, illustrations, and message. The author and illustrator tell the story of a boy who finds a secret place that is the home for many kinds of urban wildlife. This story is a wonderful teaching tool for children. It teaches respect for animals and wildlife, while at the same time educating about the many different kinds of wildlife that live in the city and how they came to live in an urban environment. "Secret Place" would be excellent for an environmental unit. I would find a way to work it into any unit, or have children read it on their own. It would be a good story to read to and share with children. Another excellent book with an environmental message is "Two Days in May" by Harriet Peck Taylor.

This book is good because it has good pictures. I like the picture where the coyote licks the water. This book reminds me of Owl Moon by Jane Yolen because both stories are about boys and fathers getting together. They are both also about birds flying and the connections people have to animals. Secret Place has great descriptions like this, "Close by is a freeway where cars and trucks boom, and a railroad track with freight trains that shunt and grunt. There are warehouses with windows blinded by dust and names paint-scrawled on their brick walls."

This beautiful book is about the resiliency of nature in the most unlikely places. In a little path of wetness in cement culvert in the middle of a city, a piece of wilderness thrives. Egrets, ducks, even a coyote make themselves at home in this little patch of green. And the neighborhood people who know about it relish it while keeping it safe by keeping it a secret.

Though this is a piece of fiction, it reads like something raw and moving that the author personally experienced. In a place I used to live, you could find egrets in the culvert on a foggy morning, and I was touched by reading a reminder of such special places. My young daughter, who does not have a comparable experience, also enjoyed the book and appreciated the specialness of the secret place.

This book is a great introduction to the concept of urban wilderness. I recommend it highly.