Before & After: A Books of Nature Timescapes

by Jan Thornhill

A combination puzzle and art book introduces "natural timescapes" to children, depicting from picture to picture how natural scenes change over spans of time ranging from a few seconds to a year. 20,000 first printing. Children's BOMC.

Genres: Nature, Animals, Science, Picture Books

32 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

I was born in 1955 in Sudbury, but spent most of my childhood in southern Ontario where, encouraged by my artist mother and engineer/inventor father, I developed a life-long passion for both art and the natural world. I spent a lot of time exploring the fields, woods, ponds, and streams near where I lived, and was an avid collector of things I found. I brought home all kinds of treasures – skulls and fossils, bird feathers and empty nests, insects, snake skins, fallen leaves. Eventually I labeled everything and made a museum in the basement. I thought I’d get rich by charging a 5¢ entry fee…but my mum was the only one who paid!

After high school, I attended the Ontario College of Art where I had fun making experimental films and videos – not drawing and painting. For about ten years after that, I illustrated freelance for magazines and newspapers, and did odd jobs such as sewing thousands of beads and sequins on Dolly Parton’s dresses. Finally, in the late eighties, I switched to the much richer life of creating children’s books. From the beginning, the aim of these wildlife-based books has been to foster in young readers a love of art, nature and the environment.

I live in the Kawarthas in a house in the woods that my husband and I built. As well as making books, I grow organic vegetables, raise a few chickens each year, make bread from captured wild yeast, and wander around in the woods looking for wild mushrooms, slime molds, beetles and animal skulls. A lot of the things I find – skulls, snake skins, desiccated insects, a mummified bat & hummingbirds, etc. – have made their way into what I call my “museum-in-a-bag,” a collection of natural treasures I share with kids when I visit schools. I’m an obsessive observer of the world around me, so much so that I consider a day I haven’t learned something to be a day wasted.

Reviews

[Jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tässä etsintäkirjassa oli kuvattu kaksi peräkkäistä aukeamaa samasta paikasta, mutta tapahtumat olivat eri aikaan! Etsittävät eläimet olivat siis liikkuneet, mikä teki etsimisestä hivenen jännittävämpää.

[Jeanine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book of comparing scenes from different ecosystems. Good for creating your own narrative and looking for clues to what's happening. Took the 3 year old a minute to warm up to it, but became quite engaged after at looking for the creatures in the scenes that match the ones arou d the boarders. Also good for cause and effect ideas.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

We love spending time trying to figure out all the changes in the before and after pictures. It’s a great way to build memory and nature appreciation while learning the names of all sorts of wildlife!

[The Brothers · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no narrative to this book, but I can easily spend 15 minutes "reading" it to my five year old and my two year old. It's lovely illustrations of a naturescape with all the animals in the picture illustrated and labeled around the border. When you turn the page, the naturescape has change (thus the before and after). For one the first page is day, the second is night. For another it's during the rain and after the rain.

The illustrations are so wonderful and there's just so much to look at.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recommended to go with our 2nd grade social studies unit on locations, regions, etc.

[Bree · Rating 4 out of 5]

Notes:
great cause/effect book -- why the after picture looks like it does
each page covers a different time span (1 second, 1 week) and location