 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, and welcome or welcome back to my channel. Today I'm here to review a new release picture book, Footprint, by Phil Cummings and illustrated by Sally Cuell Hanne. This is just a stunning book. I really love Phil Cummings work. He is very lyrical in his storytelling style. And the blurb on this book says, you carry hope and future need with careful footprint, plant the seed, breathe, yes breathe, embark on a lyrical meditative journey through nature's tapestry where every step you take leaves a legacy of wonder and protection for the natural world. And this is exactly that. It it's very much a poem about taking care of our world and it's just a wonderful reading experience. It's a book about environmentalism without being heavy-handed. It looks at how when we consider our environment, when we're mindful about how we engage with it, it can have an incredibly positive impact on ourselves and also on the world around us. Throughout the book we are looking at a variety of different environments from forests to cities to fields to the animals that inhabit those environments. They're all incorporated through the illustrations within the text while the poetry enhances us thinking about how we actually interact within those environments. And it's a beautiful and gentle way to explore humanity's impact on the earth. So I absolutely loved the lyrical storytelling style in here. It does rhyme. So if that's not your thing, be aware of that. But it does feel very much like you could pull this poem out and just read it without the illustrations, without it being a picture book. And it would be just as impactful as having the book and having the beautiful illustrations to immerse yourself in. I also liked that in the illustrations all of the characters that we meet throughout the story, they're all diverse. It's not just your homogenous white person. It is very much inclusive of the fact that humanity is varied and that everyone is valid and everyone's impact is important. The illustrations are just really beautiful in general. But I do love it when we feature a diverse cast of particularly children in books because all children need to see themselves represented. This book is just a stunning one to include in a classroom because not only is it because not only is it just a stunning book that gets kids thinking about environmentalism and their impact on it. I mean, if you're doing an inquiry unit on sustainability or the environment, this is just perfect because it's a great introduction into exploring those themes and thinking about, well, how do you interact with the world? How do you impact our environment? What footprint do you leave and how can we continue to improve how we interact and how we affect the environments around us? So it's a great jumping off point for discussions around that. I would also think that in a middle and upper primary classroom, if you pull the text out, so if you actually gave students just the text from this book to begin to explore and play with the words in here or look at the poetic form or how the sentences have been structured, there's a lot of power in that. And then to put it back and think about, well, how do the illustrations help to enhance exactly what the words are trying to tell us? Like, there's so much that you could do with that and it would be amazing because the other thing that I love in here is the vocabulary is just outstanding. Some of the words that I pulled out were trudge, precious, cloaked, ponder, resilient, shroud, deftly, nurture, treacherous, scar. Like, these are really great words. They have a lot of depth. They have a lot of meaning. They have a lot of things that kids can do to explore and play with them. And they're all in here. And this isn't a long text. It's not overly wordy. It's a fairly standard, you know, picture book length. It's very easily enjoyable for younger readers as it is older readers. But I think you could definitely do some amazing things with this text because it is just so rich. The language is lush and gorgeous and ready for exploration. I absolutely love this. So thank you to Alan and Anwen for the review copy because I just, I read it. They had to put it down and then I read it again. And I just had to sit with it for a while because it was just so gorgeous. In the description down below, I will leave information where you can find the author, the illustrator, etc. So if you want to find out more information, you absolutely can. If you've read the book or you're planning on picking it up, I would love to hear about it. If you want to let me know that you're here, but you don't want to leave a comment, feel free to leave a butterfly emoji down below. Otherwise, I hope that we're on the world just staying safe and healthy. And I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.