The Museum Makers! The Collectorsby Alice Feagan

Winslow and Rosie were building an impressive collection of natural wonders.

In fact, the two girl adventurers have a charming tree house home in a spreading oak, and they have almost completely covered one wall with shadow box frames filled with the products of their explorations. Only one space is left to be filled.

The two friends made the perfect team.

Winslow leads the expeditions, hoping to locate unusual finds in unusual places. Rosie researches and identifies the finds, recording them with drawings in her journal.

One morning they realize that there is only one place left on the exhibition wall. They are determined to fill that place with something spectacular, something novel!

So they packed their gear and set off into the forest.

It's not long before Winslow spots an outcroping with a huge purple gemstone! But it's just too massive to move! Then Rosie discovers the skeleton of a T-Rex that needs excavation, but digging out the whole thing is just not do-able! Other items they like are located too high on a tree and too deep in a lake. Finally, their luck takes a turn for the better. They venture down deep into a wide cave, until the headlamps reveal an sleepy, angry...... BEAR!

AHHHHHHHHH!!

The bear gives up the chase on the way down the mountain, but Winslow and Rosie don't stop running until they are inside the latch their own front door. Their finds bag is empty, and so is that empty space still on their specimen wall.

Maybe enough is enough! Or maybe there is a different way to look at nature at home!

And soon the intrepid but also handy adventurers create a window in that space, one through which they can look out on nature any time they want and find many wonderful things. And they are just in time to watch a nestful of eggs hatching in a tree outside, in Alice Feagan's The Collectors (Kids Can Books, 2021).

Author-illustrator Alice Feagan's story of adventuring girl naturalists is told in crisp text and terrific cut-paper illustrations of her outgoing explorers' own little nature museum which may inspire primary graders to seek out and curate their own nature collections.

Writes Booklist, "Muted but detailed digital artwork confers the aesthetic of an old, well-loved museum onto the page ...."