I grew up surrounded by tall lush pine trees and playing in and around them was standard childhood fare. Today’s picture book brings back many fond memories of those days while also combining poetry, look-and-find illustrations, and a gorgeously imaginative woods setting.

Rachel Piercey is a freelance poet, editor, and tutor. She has coedited three children’s poetry anthologies with the Emma Press and regularly performs her work and runs poetry workshops in primary schools. Piercey’s poems for adults have been published in various journals, including The Poetry Review, Magma, and The Rialto, as well as two pamphlets with the Emma Press and one with HappenStance. She lives in London. You can learn more about her at her website.

IT’S BUSY DOWN IN THE WOODS TODAY is part of the Brown Bear Wood series. These giant picture books (10.5″ wide by 12.5″ tall) are chock-a-block full of spreads that readers can pour over for hours. These pages also come with a list of items to find with clever descriptions like “SPIDER having a lovely dream.” In this book, it’s a busy day for a young bear we follow throughout the woods. There is also a cast of Townsfolk we are first introduced to before we go perusing. This is a book young readers will come back to over and over again for the friendly and detailed illustrations by Freya Hartas alone. BUT let’s not forget the lovely lyrical poems that wind us along our journey, propelling us forward almost with song. These books are the kind I loved to read as a child and they’re adorable to boot!

Please note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher to review, but the opinions, as always, are my own.

Welcome Rachel!

Me: You are a very talented and prolific writer and poet. For those who might not be familiar with your work, can you talk about your journey? When did you start writing? How did that lead you to this particular picture book?

Rachel: Thank you! I’ve been writing poems since primary school and never stopped! I joined the poetry society at my university and then did a Masters in writing poetry, before working at the UK’s national charity for poetry for several years. At around the same time, one of my best friends set up an indie poetry publishing house, The Emma Press, and I helped edit many of the pamphlets and anthologies.

Emma and I were friends from secondary school, where we often chatted about our favourite children’s books, so it was a natural development to start publishing poetry for children. I wrote my first children’s poems for our first children’s anthology, a collection of poems about myths and legends published in 2015, and I was hooked. I think that writing for children taps directly into poetry’s ancient oral origins – telling a gripping story in a musical, memorable way – and I found that so enjoyable.

I was building my profile as a children’s poet when Magic Cat found my work – and I’m very glad they did! I’ve been working with them on the Brown Bear Wood series for over five years now.

Me: This Woods series has become incredibly successful, translated into 27 different languages! I haven’t seen anything else quite like them. What first gave you the idea to make a nature poetry book like this for young readers with search-and-find information in each page?

Rachel: Magic Cat got in touch with me initially. They had worked with Freya on Slow Down and wanted to do a new book combining woodland search-and-find and poetry. I was thrilled – I loved Where’s Wally? (I think you call it Where’s Waldo? in the US!) when I was young and this sounded like a delightful mash-up with some other childhood favourites, Brambly Hedge and The Flower Fairies. I had also been doing some courses on tree identification, so I was excited by the prospect of a book set in the woodland. I had great fun dreaming up the specific settings, characters and activities for the woodland creatures, from taking swimming lessons, to staging a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to having a 500th birthday party for an ancient oak tree! I love that we’re encouraging young readers to notice small details, because I think this is such an important life skill. Brown Bear Wood is an enchanted place, but it’s also real – the trees are specific species, the flowers are seasonally appropriate, and the importance of the whole ecosystem is made clear.

Me: The illustrations by Freya Hartas are incredibly detailed, which they would need to be for a search-and-find format. How does that work? Do you write the poems and she has free reign to include whatever she wants to accompany them? Or do you have art notes for her?

Rachel: Aren’t they incredible? Freya is so talented. Every one of the hundreds of animals she draws has its own little character. Nothing is background in Freya’s artwork – the smallest beetle and the most distant tree are fully realized and pop off the page.

I write the poem, an overview of the scene, and the list of ‘what to spot’ details and send them to my editor. Freya sends back a black and white version of the scene, with all those details included, plus countless others. Every time, it’s a treat to click on the file and see what she’s done, and how she’s resolved the combination of often conflicting perspectives – big and small, near and far, overground and underground – which she always does, cleverly and beautifully! I send back any comments – for example, we might want to move a character around to be more prominent, or add a reference to something they do in another scene – and then Freya creates the final colourful masterpiece.

Me: Wow! What a process! The illustrations are absolutely adorable and the perfect compliment for each poem. I find it impossible to choose a favorite. Were there any illustration surprises for you when you finally saw them? Any favorites?

Rachel: I often show the pictures when I go into schools to run workshops and a perennial favourite is the rabbit reading on the toilet in ‘Bunny’s Birthday’, in If You Go Down to the Woods Today – so cheeky and cute! For adults, there are a range of highly relatable expressions as various animals are woken by their alarm clocks and sip their cups of tea or coffee! Check out ‘Getting Ready for the Day’ in It’s Busy Down in the Woods Today for a particularly funny selection. In Grand Old Oak and the Birthday Ball, in the scene ‘Bear Plans a Party’, there’s a chipmunk sneaking off with a huge slice of cake – its smug and mischievous little face makes me smile every time. I also love the botanical accuracy of the sweet chestnuts, beech trees, oaks and other species in the woodland.

Me: I understand that this book series has spun off into board books and even puzzles. How does that work? Are the puzzles purely Freya’s work? Or do you write a scene for those as well?

Rachel: The puzzles use Freya’s illustrations and my list of things to spot, plus an introductory couplet. The board books use illustrations from across the series, reworked for the theme with lots of new themed details to find. I write fresh poems for those, establishing a new self-contained story within the world of Brown Bear Wood, and a new set of seek-and-find challenges for the reader.

Me: Your writing sings on every page. I love how the poems are so rhythmic and lilting that they just move you along from page to page. Did you use any poetic forms or specific meters for them? Did you have any favorite poems in this particular book?

Rachel: Thank you, that’s lovely to hear! The big books in the Brown Bear Wood series are all written in ballad metre, which is one of my favourite forms. Each four-line stanza has a four-stress line, then a three-stress line, then a four-stress line, then a three-stress line, with the two three-stress lines rhyming together. It’s an old poetic storytelling form and it has a satisfying swing-and-return feel to it. I find a four-stress line feels as natural and expansive as a heartbeat – then a three-stress line, slightly shorter, has a brisker, more conclusive feel to it. I think ballad metre suits the warm, narrative, scene-setting work of the poems and makes for a lilting storybook rhythm.

The board books are written in four-stress couplets, which I think suits the more compact format and the younger readership. Wisdom of the Woods, which is a book of forty nature poems, has a wide range of poetic forms, from sonnets to haiku, plus some free verse, too.  

In It’s Busy Down in the Woods Today, I think my favourite poem is ‘Time for School’. Professor Owl, who is the woodland’s schoolteacher, is one of my favourite characters. She’s a writer, too, and really loves a cup of tea – an owl after my own heart! I am pleased with how I captured a sense of her wide-ranging skills in this poem, and how much she inspires her pupils, and how hard she works. It’s a little praise poem to teachers, really. I’m pleased I found space to have her reading aloud in there, as well – all my teachers read aloud to us at primary school and it was such a special part of the day. I know she’s reading her class some poems, as well as stories!

Me: Aww! I love that. Any advice for other new picture book writers and/or poets?

Rachel: I learn a lot of poems off by heart and I think this has really helped embed a sense of rhythm and rhyme deep inside me, including the more angular music of free verse poetry. I’d recommend learning off by heart to anyone – I feel like these poems are sort of treasured permanent loans, mine to take out and enjoy the glow from whenever I choose. It also means I’m never bored. I have silently recited ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, ‘The Lady of Shalott’ and countless others in all sorts of random situations!

A group of fellow writers to cheer you on is a wonderful thing. I am lucky to have a lovely online workshop group, and they are a great source of inspiration and support – we also keep an eye out for opportunities and share them with each other. Every year, I do the NaPoWriMo challenge to write a poem every day during April, and that’s always exhilarating and ensures I have a big bank of drafts to work on, no matter how much I write for the rest of the year. Sticking to a strict challenge can be paradoxically freeing!

That’s great advice Rachel. Thank you for stopping by my blog today.

Dear readers, this book was published in the US on June 17th. If you haven’t had a chance yet to check it out (or any of the other books in this series), I highly recommend them. The jaunty poems will waltz you along, but the illustrations will make you slow down to observe. They’re a wonderful combination of effects!