Four tiny children in red caps with white spots play by a dark woodland pond. One rides on the back of a bat flying over the bank, one pokes at the water with a long reed, one looks up at the bat, and the fourth leans toward a big toad in a hollow under the bank. Frogs sit in the grass in front, and tree trunks are mirrored in the still water. Elsa Beskow painted this watercolor for the third spread of her picture book Tomtebobarnen, published in Gothenburg by Åhlén & Åkerlund in 1910 and known in English as Children of the Forest.

The book follows a tiny family who live deep in the roots of an old pine, gather mushrooms and blueberries, shelter under toadstools when it rains, and play with the squirrels and frogs. Beskow was perhaps the most prominent of the women picture-book creators who emerged in Sweden at the end of the 19th century, and she drew inspiration from British illustrators such as Randolph Caldecott and Walter Crane and from Art Nouveau. Since 1958 the Swedish Library Association has given an annual Elsa Beskow plaque to a children's book illustrator. All 32 of her original sheets for the book are in the same collection.

It is in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.