Fiddlehead Forest

by Jana Curll

In Jana Curll’s humorous graphic novel Fiddlehead Forest, a group of forest friends sets out to rescue a fallen tree, only to discover that its life in the forest is far from over. Their adventure introduces readers to nurse logs, biodiversity, and the surprising ways a changing forest supports its inhabitants.

Big Idea

Something that looks like a loss can become a source of new life. By looking closely and revising their assumptions, readers can discover connections among living things—and learn how pictures and words work together to reveal those connections.

Discussion Questions

1.Why do you think the forest friends first believe the fallen tree needs rescuing? What might they be overlooking?
2.How does learning about the tree’s role as a nurse log change the meaning of helping in this story?
3.What can you learn about the forest from the pictures that you might miss if you read only the words?
4.How does humor affect the way you understand or remember the book’s science ideas?
5.If you could add one final scene, how would you show the friends caring for the forest after their discovery?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes📦 A copy of Fiddlehead Forest, paper, small paper scraps, pencils, crayons or colored pencils, tape, and chart paper or a whiteboard.

Learning Goals

Retell the central problem, response, and discovery in Fiddlehead Forest using words and pictures.
Explain that a nurse log is a fallen, decaying tree that can support new plants and provide habitat.
Use panel sequence, dialogue, and visual details to control the pace of a short comic.
Support an interpretation with a detail from the book’s words or illustrations.
Revise an initial idea when new observations provide a different explanation.

Activity Steps

1.Read or revisit the rescue attempt and the discovery of the nurse log. Make a two-column chart labeled 'What the friends first think' and 'What they learn,' recording evidence from the book.
2.Briefly explain that decaying wood can hold moisture, release nutrients as it breaks down, and support seedlings and other organisms. Distinguish this ecological process from the characters’ imagined thoughts and speech.
3.Fold a sheet of paper into four panels. Plan the sequence: notice the fallen tree, attempt a rescue, discover its new role, and respond with a new understanding.
4.Draw the comic and add speech bubbles or captions. Make the rescue feel quick through short dialogue or action marks, then slow the discovery with a larger, more detailed view; younger students may dictate text, while older students add an accurate science caption.
5.Tape a small paper flap over part of the last panel. Under it, draw and label a forest connection supported by the book or the lesson, such as a seedling growing on decaying wood.
6.Share comics with partners. Partners identify where the pace changes and explain one way the fallen tree supports forest life; finish by revising one unclear panel or science detail.

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS RL.K.3 / RL.1.3 / RL.3.3 — Identify characters, settings, and major events; describe characters’ responses and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events, using the appropriate grade-level standard.
ELA: CCSS RL.K.7 / RL.2.7 / RL.5.7 — Explore how illustrations and visual elements contribute to understanding a story, using grade-appropriate expectations.
Writing: CCSS W.K.3 / W.2.3 / W.5.3 — Compose a sequenced narrative through drawing, dictation, or writing, with increasing attention to details, dialogue, and pacing.
Science: NGSS 2-LS4-1 — Use observations of plants and animals to compare the diversity of life in different habitats; extend the lesson by comparing a nurse-log microhabitat with another forest microhabitat.
Science: NGSS 5-LS2-1 — Extend the comic into a model showing movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

In Fiddlehead Forest, the forest friends’ effort to rescue a fallen tree gives readers an immediate purpose for reading: What will the friends do, and will it help? The discovery that the tree has become a nurse log changes the direction of the story. This makes the book a useful model for writers learning to move from action to observation, and from an initial assumption to a more informed understanding. A Pace-Write-Read study asks students to notice how a graphic novel controls both movement and attention. Read selected sequences aloud, then reread them silently to examine how panels, dialogue, visual detail, and page layout shape the experience. Students can borrow the story’s central craft move—hurrying toward a solution, then slowing down to notice something important—without copying its language or artwork. For younger students, emphasize oral storytelling and drawing; for older students, connect pacing choices to humor, scientific explanation, and the reader’s changing perspective.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
Pacing	Compare a sequence from the rescue effort with a sequence explaining or revealing the nurse log. Ask where readers move quickly and where the words or pictures invite them to linger.
Plot	Map the central movement as problem, attempted solution, discovery, and changed understanding. Discuss how the nurse-log discovery changes what a successful ending could mean.
Prosody	Read selected speech bubbles aloud, using the artwork and punctuation to guide expression. Try an urgent rescue voice and a curious discovery voice, then discuss how each affects listening pace.
Word	Study the term 'nurse log' and explain that it names a fallen, decaying tree that supports new growth. Ask how learning this term changes the reader’s view of the same object.
Concept	Trace how the story makes the idea of interdependence concrete through a fallen tree. Have students explain the concept with a picture and a sentence rather than only naming it.
Voice & Worldview	Discuss how the playful storytelling makes forest science approachable. Contrast the friends’ initial rescue-minded outlook with a view that recognizes value in decay and change.
Point of View	Ask whose understanding readers follow during the rescue effort and what the illustrations allow readers to notice independently. Rewrite one moment from the imagined perspective of a seedling on the log.
Setting & Place	Treat the forest as essential to the problem and discovery, not simply a backdrop. Identify illustrated features that help readers understand how the fallen tree fits into its surroundings.
Original Characters	Notice how Curll gives the forest friends individuality through their depicted reactions, appearances, and speech. Students can invent a new forest observer with a distinctive response while keeping its ecological role plausible.
Dialogue	Choose an exchange during the rescue effort and examine what it reveals about the speakers’ goals or assumptions. Compare its effect with a student-written caption summarizing the same moment.
Details	Search the illustrations for small details that help explain the nurse log’s role. Sort observations into evidence about habitat, new growth, and character reaction.
Descriptions	Discuss how drawings can do descriptive work that prose would otherwise supply. Have students describe a selected view of the log, then decide which words would be unnecessary beside the picture.
Firsts	Locate the first moment the fallen tree becomes a problem and the first clue that it has another role. Ask how these introductions shape readers’ expectations.
Immediacy & Engagement	Examine how the friends’ rescue goal gives readers something to care about right away. Students can begin their own comics with a visible problem rather than a long explanation.
Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Compare a moment presented through character action with a passage that communicates ecological information. Discuss when writers should let readers experience an event and when a concise explanation helps.
Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Ask what readers want to find out while the friends attempt their rescue. Explore how discovering the nurse log’s value creates surprise by changing the problem rather than simply solving it.
Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Check whether the selected pages use any of these devices rather than assuming they do. As an extension, students can add an imagined flash-forward showing future growth on the log and label it as their own prediction.
Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Inspect an actual page turn around an attempt or discovery and ask what information is held back until the next page. If the edition has chapter breaks, discuss their effect; otherwise, focus on page and panel transitions.
Pace & Creativity	Redraw one rescue moment as three small panels and then as one large panel. Compare which version emphasizes effort, humor, or close observation.
Play	Use the book’s playful rescue premise to generate imaginary solutions before returning to the science. Ask which playful idea could become a comic scene and why leaving the log in place may be more helpful.
Performance	Perform a short exchange from the book with students voicing characters and another student describing important visual action. Repeat it with a deliberate pause at the ecological discovery.
Personality	Invite students to support a description of a forest friend’s personality with a specific expression, action, or line. Discuss how that personality influences the way the character approaches the fallen tree.
Humor	Choose a moment students find funny and identify whether the humor comes from words, pictures, reactions, or an unexpected result. Discuss how the rescue premise lets readers laugh while reconsidering an assumption.
Pause	Stop at a view that helps explain the nurse log and give students silent looking time. Ask what becomes noticeable when the class slows down instead of immediately reading onward.
Poetry / Poetic Devices	Look for sound play, imagery, or repeated sounds in a selected passage without assuming a particular device appears. Students can write their own alliterative caption about the forest and compare its mood with a plain factual caption.
Repetition	Look for recurring words, actions, expressions, or views of the tree. Discuss whether returning to the same subject emphasizes the friends’ persistence or makes their changing understanding visible.
Rhythm	Tap once for each panel while rereading a short sequence, then notice how much reading each panel requires. Explore how alternating brief exchanges with detailed images can create a changing rhythm.
Punctuation	Inspect punctuation in the forest friends’ speech bubbles and read the lines accordingly. Rewrite a student-created rescue line with a different end mark to hear how urgency or uncertainty changes.
Questions	Track the questions the story raises, including whether the tree needs rescuing at all. Have students distinguish questions answered by dialogue from those answered through looking closely at pictures.
Compare-Contrast	Compare the tree’s role when standing with its role as a nurse log, using book evidence and clearly identified science information. Emphasize that different roles can both support forest life.
Objects	Follow the fallen tree as the story’s central physical object. Ask how its meaning changes even though it remains a fallen tree.
Threes	Check whether a selected sequence groups actions or reactions in threes; do not impose a pattern that is not there. Students can experiment with a three-beat comic: notice, try, rethink.
Lists	Build an evidence-based list of organisms or relationships shown or explained around the nurse log. Compare how quickly a list communicates information with how a scene helps readers experience a discovery.
White Space & Negative Space	Inspect the spaces between panels and around words and figures on an actual page. Ask how these spaces separate moments, keep dialogue readable, or help a small forest detail stand out.
Art & Graphics	Read a selected sequence first by looking only at the art, then by combining art and words. Identify what visual storytelling contributes to the rescue action and the ecological explanation.
Interactives & Gamification	Turn rereading into a classroom evidence hunt: find an initial assumption, a clue, and a detail showing the log’s value. This is an added teaching activity, not a claim that the book contains game features.
Placement	Examine where speech bubbles and important visual details sit within a selected panel. Ask how their placement guides the eye and affects when readers notice a clue.
Form	Discuss why a graphic novel is well suited to combining humorous character action with forest science. Translate one short sequence into prose to compare what each form makes easy to communicate.
Dummy	Make a folded-paper mock-up, or dummy, of a short nurse-log comic before adding finished art. Move the discovery to different pages to test how its placement changes anticipation.
Passion	Ask which forest detail makes students want to look more closely or learn more. Use that curiosity to choose a specific, accurate detail for their own comics rather than making unsupported claims about the author’s personal intentions.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-Read task: 'Slow Down—the Log Is Alive with Life!' Minutes 0–3: Revisit the friends’ rescue effort and the discovery of the nurse log; identify one detail showing why the fallen tree matters. Minutes 3–5: Fold paper into four panels and plan an original forest-friend response to the same situation. Minutes 5–12: Draw two quick rescue-action panels with brief speech bubbles, then a larger discovery panel showing an accurate nurse-log relationship, followed by a final response panel; students may combine spaces so the discovery gets more room. Minutes 12–16: Add one science caption and reread with a partner, moving briskly through the action and pausing at the discovery. Minutes 16–19: Revise one pacing choice—shorten dialogue, enlarge a detail, or add a silent reaction—to make the change in understanding clearer. Minute 19–20: Share the sentence, 'I slowed the reader down when ___ because ___.' Younger students may draw and dictate; older students should distinguish their invented dialogue from the ecological information.

Classroom Activities

Rescue, Rethink, Regrow!

Students create a four-panel comic showing a forest character’s changing understanding of a fallen tree: noticing it, trying to help, discovering its nurse-log role, and choosing a better-informed response. A fold-out paper flap on the final panel reveals seedlings, fungi, or small animals connected to the log, making the forest’s less-obvious relationships visible.

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