I Was

I Was is a picture book that treats animal skulls as a kind of language. It presents a skull as a lasting object that lets us look back at the life of the creature it once belonged to, and it uses that idea to reflect on the cycle of life.

Every ridge, hollow and crevice can say something about where an animal lived, what it ate and what it was good at. The book looks closely at six skulls, so readers come to know the lives of a lynx, a deer, a beaver, a hummingbird, a wolf and an owl.

Katherine Hocker wrote the lyrical text and Natasha Donovan created the flowing illustrations. The book also includes accurate scientific information and back matter resources. It is meant to feed a child's natural curiosity and encourage careful, mindful observation of the natural world and of ourselves.