The Forest Pool

Diego, a boy who lives at the edge of a forest in Mexico, is pulled out of a dream about a hummingbird and the secret of Montezuma's cloak when his friend Popo arrives with news: he has seen an iguana, the ancient tree lizard said to have lived in the forest before people came. With Diego's parrot, Polly, the two boys set out to catch it, but their attempts go badly and the iguana slips away into a pool deep among the trees. Even with help from Diego's father, the boys begin to wonder whether the iguana belongs in the forest after all. Laura Adams Armer, who won the Newbery Medal for Waterless Mountain, illustrated the story with richly colored paintings inspired by Mexican folk and mural art, and the book was a 1939 Caldecott Honor book.