HOME
By Margot Dallas • Illustrated by Barbara Kowalska
Some books invite young readers to explore far-off places. HOME invites them to understand why those places matter. This 50-page visual poem by Margot Dallas, brought to life through the soft watercolors of illustrator Barbara Kowalska, guides children through habitats around the world: forest floors, ocean depths, cloud forests and backyard branches. Along the way, it reveals how every creature depends on its environment, and how those environments depend on us.
The idea for HOME began in 2018 with a moment of heartbreak. Dallas was watching news footage of the Amazon rainforest being razed, “the lungs of the planet,” as she described it during our conversation, and felt urgency. “If children know something is living in those oceans or living in that forest or living in that tree, they’re not going to want to tear all these things down,” she told me. That instinct became a poem, then a promise to her mother, who encouraged her to publish it someday. After her mother’s passing in 2019, Dallas kept that promise, refining the manuscript, collaborating with Kowalska and ultimately self-publishing the book in 2024.
The story behind the art is equally compelling. Kowalska, Dallas’s longtime hairdresser and watercolorist, illustrated the book while navigating two cancer diagnoses. Their friendship shaped a collaborative process that preserved Dallas’s scientific sensibility, from the shifts in scale to the blend of familiar and unusual animals and the invitation to look closer. “We could design the art around the words,” Dallas said. “I think that made all the difference.”
A visit to Costa Rica’s Children’s Eternal Rainforest also helped shape the book’s message. Dallas was inspired by the true story of a 9-year-old Swedish boy who helped rally children around the world to save the cloud forest in the 1980s. Today, she shares that story during school visits, gifting each classroom an Earth Day flag created in partnership with the reserve. “They’re so engaged,” she said. “It’s reinforcing for them to know children actually did this amazing thing.”
That’s the quiet power of HOME. It treats young readers not as bystanders, but as stewards. Dallas hopes families use the book as a springboard on summer hikes, in their own neighborhoods or in conversations about caring for the planet. “Maybe I can spark an interest,” she said. “Translating a love for nature into tangible community action.”
HOME is available locally at The Book Stall in Winnetka, The Book Bin in Northbrook, Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville and Downers Grove, the Morton Arboretum, and online at NestleinNature.myshopify.com.