Our Nest

With soothing language and enchanting illustrations, this gentle picture book leads children from the warm nest of their bed to the ever-expanding embrace of the world around them.

Snuggled in bed,
You’re all safe and warm,
Like a bird in a nest in a tree.

A child tucked in bed, a doe curled in the grass, a boat anchored in the harbor — everything has a nest. Even the ocean needs the earth to be its nest, while beyond, the universe holds the stars. In this tender poem, Reeve Lindbergh and Jill McElmurry use an ever-widening focus to show children the vast world beyond their beds, and all the love and comfort to be found there.

Publishers Weekly

"Snuggled in bed,/ You're all safe and warm,/ Like a bird in a nest in a tree." But nests-even figurative ones-aren't the exclusive domains of animals, as Lindbergh (My Hippie Grandmother) explains in this poignant lullaby. McElmurry's (Mad About Plaid) detailed, gouache murals and rounded images framed in generous white space offer a kind of visual security blanket, as readers leave the confines of the bedroom and backyard. The text prompts them to think about how a valley acts as a nest for a river, a harbor as a nest for ships, the land as a nest for the ocean, and space as a nest for the planets and stars. "We're here in the nest of creation/ With the earth and the stars up above," Lindbergh writes, and by this point it's a metaphysical leap most youngsters will be ready to make. Even so, the author reassures them by bringing her poem back to the immediate and particular in the final lines: "You're here safe and warm,/ in the nest of my arms,/ When I wrap them around you with love." Author and illustrator synchronize the images on every page; McElmurry's curvilinear shapes, saturated colors and streamlined characterizations-stylings that recall early 1960s graphic design-echo the lilt of the text, and seamlessly link one painting to the next as Lindbergh's verse casts an ever-wider net. Ages 3-6. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Reeve Lindbergh, the daughter of aviator Charles Lindbergh and author Anne Morrow Lindbergh, has written many children’s books, including MY HIPPIE GRANDMOTHER and ON MORNING WINGS, as well as several memoirs for adults. She says of OUR NEST, "As a child, I loved to curl up in bed and feel as if I were inside a little warm nest. I’d think about all the other children who were curled up at the same time, just like me. It gave me a wonderful feeling."

Jill McElmurry is the illustrator of THE KETTLES GET NEW CLOTHES and I’M SMALL AND OTHER VERSES, and is the author-illustrator of MAD ABOUT PLAID. About OUR NEST, she says, "I first read the manuscript a few months after September 11 and felt so comforted by its vision of our world nesting peacefully in the universe, the way a doe nests with her fawn in tall grass. Illustrating the story was a challenge, but I found a new way of working in the process."