Based on a true story, this tribute to everyday heroism doubles as a lyrical primer on how landscapes evolve.

Long Pond—clear, reflective, and bent in the middle like a crooked finger—has been a source of joy and nourishment to a Vermont village for many years. But when a sudden late-summer storm causes the pond to swell and burst its banks, endangering everyone in its path, only one person is fast enough to warn the villagers downstream. Spencer Chamberlain, the long-legged winner of countless foot races, sprints off to cries of “Run, Chamberlain, run!” All survive, thanks to his efforts. But after the storm the glassy pond is gone, leaving the village, and future generations, with something altogether different—and every bit as nourishing. In a gentle tall tale inspired by true events that are explored in the book’s afterword, Vermont author Nancy Price Graff reveals the constantly evolving landscapes all around us, while Bagram Ibatoulline’s glorious paintings speak to the beauty and inevitability of change.

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