Evergreen
by Matthew Cordell; illus. by the author
Primary    Feiwel    48 pp.
2/23    9781250317179    $18.99

Young squirrel Evergreen is afraid of just about everything. When Mama asks her to deliver soup to Granny Oak, Evergreen sets off through the woods with trepidation. Her journey is full of unexpected incidents: she extricates a rabbit trapped between boulders, removes briars from a red-tailed hawk’s feathers, and rescues a stranded young toad. Cordell’s (­Cornbread & Poppy, rev. 3/22) picture book, with its longer-than-usual text, is broken into six engaging parts, and his fine-lined pen-and-ink drawings are colored with a soft watercolor palette of browns and greens. The varied page layouts convey both the coziness of Evergreen’s world and the tension of life as part of the ­woodland food chain. ­Evergreen arrives safely with the soup, and a rewarding character reveal allows her to complete her task and fulfill her promise. By the time she’s back home, after so many pages of adventure, ­Evergreen realizes that she is brave and she can solve problems.

From the January/February 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.