Find Me in the Forest

Written and illustrated by Jess McGeachin

Lothian Children’s Books 2026

Reviewed by Mia Macrossan

Jess is the creator of many picture books, mainly non-fiction, including South with the Seabirds, The Space Between, Business Chickens and Kind, all reviewed in StoryLinks. He has won numerous awards for his work as he is adept at exploring our world with simple accessible language and luscious artwork.

As you can guess from the title and the glorious green cover this one is all about forests. The reader is taken on a tour around the world’s forests, starting with familiar ones, the temperate rainforests and the dry eucalypt forest. ‘From rainforests high in the clouds to woodlands sprinkled with snow, the world’s forests are bursting with colourful life.‘ We meet familiar animals such as the fruit bat and the koala as well as sloths, white-nosed coati, caribou and more. My favourite is the banana slug. Reading this book prompted me to check it out on YouTube, and I don’t think I will be able to eat a banana ever again!

Other forests visited are tropical rainforest, cloud forests, deciduous forests and boreal forests. Jess describes the conditions and shows some of the creatures that live in each one. He doesn’t tell us much about the types of trees, but we do learn about how they create a canopy,  an understory and at the very bottom, leaf litter. So the reader learns the framework of what makes each forest different. The final spread shows the forests on a world map with a descriptive paragraph about each one, and a comment about the impact of human settlement in each area.

The whole works well as an introduction to forests for young readers: the text is informative without being overburdened with too many facts, the animals are appealing, (apart from the slug), and the illustrations extend the text with colour, light and movement. A welcome addition to the school and home library.

For ages 4+