Steeped in historical detail, Ibatoulline's elegant, photorealistic watercolors paint rich portraits of all four seasons of pond and people in a 19th-century Vermont village. There's a gentle wholesomeness here. Beautiful. --Kirkus Reviews This piece of Americana commemorates a rural Vermont community. Expertly drafted Rockwellian spreads by Ibatoulline ( The Hawk of the Castle ) display the beauty of the pond, and the log cabins built around it, through every season. --Publishers Weekly The story celebrates a bygone era. Graff's appended note explains that events in Vermont in 1810 inspired her story, and she separates facts from fiction. Ibatoulline gives his richly detailed, beautifully composed paintings a rustic American setting.

An appealing, history-based picture book. --Booklist Bagram Ibatoulline is one of a handful of children's illustrators to deal in realism, depicting people and things as they are rather than in a stylized way. This fall he brings his representational sensibility to a story that Nancy Price Graff has taken from a real-life drama in early 19th-century Vermont. --The Wall Street Journal Based on a true story, this lavishly illustrated and sensitively written story is ultimately about changing landscapes and how something beautiful can transform into another thing of beauty. --The Reading Eagle.