The Deer Watch

Praise

This quiet picture book records a child’s experience of nature with precision, beauty, and understated power.
—Booklist (starred review)

The large oil paintings on linen are richly textured and depict the forest landscape in quiet pastel hues. The poetic text is lovely.
—School Library Journal

Slonim, painting thickly in oils, does a lovely job of visualizing the wet stillness of a silent morning near the shore, as well as the intimacy between the terse father and his enthusiastic son. A nostalgic sensibility runs throughout Collins’s writing, the story unfolding from the poetic adult perspective of one sharing a treasured memory.
—Publishers Weekly

Slonim’s textured oil paintings, with visible brush strokes, evoke childhood, nature and the tender relationship between a father and son, adding to the scenes described in the text instead of mirroring them.
—Kirkus Reviews

Collins presents a deceptively simple story of a quiet adventure on the surface, but one that can also be used as an introduction to disappearing animal habitats.
—Library Media Connection

David Slocum has illustrated this quiet father-and-son nature ramble with paintings that are rich yet subtle; he works here with a subdued palette of greens and grays and mustardy yellows, layering thickly with fat brushstrokes. The effect is as enchanting as the sudden glimpse of a doe and two fauns.
—The Wall Street Journal

There’s much to love here: Lowery Collins’ poetic cadence and careful language; Slonim’s impressionistic paintings of the hikers and all they see as they search for deer.
—The Sunday Plain Dealer