IF I WERE

An imaginative round-robin survey of nature and one human’s part to play in the chain.

An unnamed narrator, seen only in shadowy outline on the final spread, imagines what they would like to be and do in the wild world. If they were a tree, their branches “would dance to the sound of the wind.” If they were the wind, their breeze “would carry seeds to the deserts.” The pattern goes on, through sandcastles/sand and the ocean to whales, salt, deer, birds, hummingbirds, flowers, mist, cloud, and back to tree to complete the circle. The actions described are a mix of realistic and fantastical: If the narrator were salt, they would “salt the grass that feeds the deer,” and if a desert, they would “play with the dunes to build sandcastles.” The final spread is a humdinger of an ecological message: Since they are none of those imagined things, they will “plant seeds for trees to grow and thus dance with the branches to the sound of the wind.” The stylized illustrations play with texture, color, light versus dark, and size differences to fascinating effect. The hummingbird kissing the flowers centers an up-close view of the flower, the beak and eye of the hummingbird just barely on the page. And the whimsical deer with bird-decorated antlers is a delight. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Sure to lead youngsters to consider what they could be and do in nature…and then to plant a tree.