Home in the woods by Eliza Wheeler

This was a lengthy picture book and historical fiction, which bumped it way down my list, but it's set in Wisconsin and is illustrated by Eliza Wheeler, which moved it back up! I purchased it with a grant given for the purpose of purchasing materials showing kids in the outdoors.

It's based on the true story of Eliza Wheeler's grandmother Marvel's childhood. At the age of six, her newly widowed mother Clara took her eight children to live in an abandoned tar-paper shack in the northern Wisconsin woods where they survived for five years. Wheeler writes in a realistic manner, not whitewashing the struggles and difficulties the family faced in their poverty, but also focusing on the love and family connections.

The story is narrated by a fictionalized Marvel (still alive at 93) and opens with a portrait of her mother and her children grouped around her. Wheeler depicts the family with stark white, unsmiling faces, except faint smiles on the youngest children, and slim to skinny legs and arms, showing their stark poverty. Wheeler's palette is in greens and browns, showing both the beauty and hardship of their life in the woods. The shack at first is a depressing home, with a few rusty pieces of junk and little furniture. Leaves drift across the floor but the children quickly get to work, led by the two oldest children and their mother, and clean up their new home. They find a good spot for a garden and begin to explore the isolated woods. They run across deer paths, pick berries, and marvel at the trees everywhere about them. As the seasons continue, they feel their poverty closely but the children and their mother make up games and bring color and hope to their often drab life. They struggle to survive in the harsh winter, but with the family working together they make it to spring, when the beauty of the woods returns and Marvel feels truly at home with her family.

Verdict: Even younger children can appreciate the fun parts of living in a cabin in the woods, a la Boxcar Children, while older children will get a good picture of life in the Great Depression and the struggles families survived. The story also emphasizes the importance of family and love above material possessions and the beauty of the woods.

ISBN: 9780399162909; Published October 2019 by Nancy Paulsen Books; Borrowed from another library in my consortium; Purchased for the library with funds donated towards books showing children in the outdoors.