New Picture Book: Camilla and the Fall Festival

Your favorite map-loving wild boar is back for her fourth adventure! Camilla and the Fall Festival, illustrated by Laura Wood and published by Magination Press, is a picture book for ages 4-8 about the importance of traditions, flexible thinking, and, of course, problem-solving with maps.

As the season changes, Camilla's favorite holiday celebration approaches: the Fall Festival. Hazelnut bread, chestnut pudding, leaf art, pinecone patterns... she can't wait to celebrate all the festival traditions, just like last year. But on the eve of the Fall Festival, a wind storm ruins everything, and Camilla is overwhelmed by disappointment and sadness. Can her resilience and flexible thinking, plus her forest friends working together, recover this important event? (She might even get to make another map...!)

All the Camilla books are about coping with change and using spatial thinking skills and maps for problem solving. For this story, I was inspired by my own childhood -- I always wanted holidays and other special times to be exactly the same every single year, and I would be disappointed when, inevitably, they were different. I didn't realize that it was the tradition itself that was important, and that it could still feel the same even if it wasn't exactly like the year before.

Collect all four of Camilla's adventures -- each book is set in a different season, and all books have extensive backmatter with discussion questions and activities to take the book themes further, at home or in the classroom.