Sy Montgomery, Matt Patterson (Illustrator)
Clarion Books (09/09/2025) 9780063325166
Read an Excerpt:
It all began one rainy spring evening, about sixty years ago. A scaly, shelled visitor hauled herself up a sandy New England hill. She had left her pond and walked for many hours to reach this south-facing slope. Here, under the cover of twilight, she dug a hole with her strong back legs and laid more than a dozen precious eggs the size of Ping-Pong balls. She carefully covered them back up with sand, and then left to return to her pond. The warm summer sun would do the rest.
Three months later, the smooth sand exploded with life: the baby snapping turtles had hatched!
They didn’t know how lucky they already were, for many nests get destroyed. Skunks and raccoons dig up the eggs to eat them. Drought can dry them out. Ants and flies invade the nest. People and dogs sometimes disturb the eggs, too.
Though lucky, these babies still had a difficult journey ahead. They had to find a pond, and each baby turtle had to face many dangers while getting there. Hungry foxes and coyotes might find them. Birds like crows could swoop in for a turtle feast. Snakes might swallow them whole. Even a chipmunk will eat a little turtle!
Brave baby Fire Chief walked down the hill and crossed a country road. On tiny, clawed feet smaller than pencil erasers, he plodded through fields. He passed a house and walked through a yard. A quarter mile away, he found a small pond shaped like a heart. It was the water supply for a brand-new fire station. And it was perfect. He quickly hid among the cattails, pickerelweed, and lily pads.
Frogs and fish couldn’t see him. He hid from the heron who visited. Not even the firemen in the firehouse knew he was there . . .
. . . until, years later, someone spotted the snapping turtle basking on a log. Fire Chief was now ten years old. He was nearly a foot long—big enough that almost no one could eat him. He was no longer afraid. He was the king of his pond. What a lucky turtle!
Every fall, some of the firefighters would see Fire Chief crawl out of the heart-shaped pond and walk across the road to a larger, shallower pond. This was a better place for him to spend the winter, buried in the mud. The crew would see him again each spring, when he came back to his summer pond—a better place to find the fish, insects, and plants that he loved to eat.
Years went by. Then decades. The firefighters watched Fire Chief grow. Fire Chief watched the people grow older, too. He met their sons and daughters and saw their children grow up. Some became firefighters themselves.
The town was also changing. There were more houses, more people, more cars. The dirt road separating Fire Chief’s summer and winter ponds was paved with asphalt and painted with a double yellow line. The country lane had become a state highway filled with fast cars.
And then one day, Fire Chief was unlucky…..