Spring Thing! Carpenter's Helper by Sybil Rosen

THE NEW BATHROOM IS HALFWAY FINISHED!

In her overalls and yellow safety helmet, Renata is happy to be helping Daddy. They are refurbishing their bathroom with a fancy oval window and a big old-fashioned bathtub with fancy legs.

SHE CAN ALREADY PICTURE THE CASTLES OF BUBBLES SHE WILL BUILD IN IT.

Renata carefully holds the bracing board as Dad nails it up to support the place where he will cut out the new window! With interest she peeps inside the walls at the pipes and wires inside.

But it is early spring, and Renata's is not the only family working on a new house. After one night, when Daddy leaves the new window space uncovered, Renata's discovers that a pair of wrens seem to be building their new house on the bottom shelf over the tub in her bathroom. Daddy's bathroom makeover has to come to a halt while the bird parents build a snug and comfy nest of leaves, grass, twigs.

And just as soon as Mama Wren lines the nest with soft moss and a squiggle of ribbon for decor, she beds down in it and soon lays four red-brown eggs.

"WE WON'T BE ABLE TO WORK NOW," SAID HER FATHER.

"CAN YOU WAIT THAT LONG FOR YOUR BUBBLE BATH?"

"I CAN WAIT!" RENATA SMILES.

Soon the baby wrens hatch and peep, while the parents fly back and forth through the window with take-out baby bird food to keep the babies growing in their little nest on the shelf.

SOMETIMES PAPA WREN SITS IN THE WINDOWSILL AND SINGS AND SINGS!

And when the little wrens are ready to fledge, Mama and Papa Wren sit in the window frame and churr to the babies to fly to the window and outside with them. But the babies are not able to fly all the way, and all four of them wind up making emergency landings in Renata's big bathtub! Thinking fast, Renata grabs a small plank and puts one end in the bathtub to make a bridge for the fledgelings, and soon they are up and on the wing to the warm spring scene outside, in Sybil Rosen's just published Carpenter's Helper (Schwartz and Wade, 2021).

With this beguiling story of a unusually patient girl and her dad, brought to life with the delightful illustrations done in colored pencil and soft palette by artist Camille Garoche, this is an unusual picture book that utilizes a loving parent-and-child and parallel avian family relationship, a sweet baby bird rescue story filled with the warmth of love and spring.

Says Publishers Weekly's starred review, "Excelling in natural illustrations with a slightly cartoonish bent, Garoche offers fine-lined colored pencil art done digitally in a soft color palette. This gentle story, with its respect for family, nature, construction, and collaboration, will lift readers’ spirits as surely as Renata boosts the wrens.”