#18 Lost in the Woods

Title:  Lost in the Woods: a Photographic Fantasy

Author:  Carl R. Sams II and Jean Stoick

Illustrator: Carl R. Sams II and Jean Stoick

Publisher:  Carl R. Sams II Photography

Copyright: 2004

Pages:  44

Genre/Category: Fantasy

I picked this book out because it uses photographs to tell a story rather than illustrations. I really liked this because it stood out among the other books that I was looking at. Lost in the Woods tells the story about a baby deer who, according to the other animals around him, appears to be lost. We find out in the story that the fawn’s mother told him to wait for her. Through most of the book, the fawn is alone and all of the other animals talk to him and ask him where his mother is. By the end, the fawn and mother are reunited.

The illustrations in this book are color photographs. The photos take up most to all of the page, with the text sitting on top of the photograph. There are a few pages with a mix of photograph and white space, but these are few and far between. On the pages that have some white space, it almost appears as if the photograph is painted with watercolor.

I highly recommend this book to all ages. I haven’t seen many books that use color photographs for the illustrations, and this gives the book a level of realism that other books don’t have. This would be a great book to use in a science lesson. In the book, it explains that a baby deer is left alone by its mother for almost two weeks, because during his newborn stage, he has no scent. If the mother is around the baby for long, her scent will attract predators. This would be a good lesson about deer for students.