Some illustrators bounce around Caldecott discussions for years without winning or honoring. Evan Turk is one. His illustrations for Grandfather Gandhi, written by Arun Gandhi and Bethany Hegedus, were part of the Caldecott conversation when the book came out in 2014, and in 2022, The People’s Painter: How Ben Shahn Fought for Justice with Art, written by Cynthia Levinson and illustrated by Turk, was acclaimed on many fronts and wound up winning the Sibert Medal. Turk’s art catches the eye with a distinctive look that blends expressiveness and gravity. His gift is in visually conveying telling details alongside large, sweeping emotions.  

In A Forest Song, the first two spreads introduce the heightened, lyrical language of author Kirsten Hall’s cento poem: 

"Into the forest, dark and deep, / With miles to go before I sleep... // Beneath the holy oaks I wander. / Here, O my heart, just listen!"  

Hall pulls her lines from a varied cast of poets: Mary Oliver, Robert Frost, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Lucille Clifton, and Pablo Neruda among them. The effect is Transcendental, Whitmanesque, expansive.  

Turk’s illustrations capture the joy and wonder of the poem in full-page spreads packed end-to-end with curving, textured strokes of gouache in rich, jewel-toned hues. He fills the pages with a glory of trees — thick tree trunks, bending branches, blowing leaves. There are beavers, deer, bears, birds, and other animals, rendered in a style that is somewhere between realistic and folksy, warm without being overly cute. A nighttime spread toward the end evokes van Gogh’s Starry Night. Nature feels all-consuming.  

Amid this exuberant abundance, Turk creates a narrator — a child bedecked in raincoat, galoshes, and sensible hat. Walking stick in hand, this ordinary kid steps into the forest to explore. In spread after spread, the language, flora, and fauna celebrate nature’s beauty, while the child walks through, anchoring the reader in concrete experience, following a familiar plot: venturing forth, getting lost, finding home, going to bed, waking up the next morning. Hall’s poem is lovely, but Turk’s illustrations turn the words into a story. 

The Caldecott criteria specify that committee members should consider excellence of pictorial interpretation of a book’s concept, particularly in recognition of a child audience. Turk does that masterfully here with art that mirrors the text, adds beauty, and makes the poetry accessible to people, big or small, who might struggle with lyrical language. Turk’s illustrations are so effervescent, so inviting, so right. It’s work worthy of recognition.

[Read The Horn Book Magazine review of A Forest Song]