Why not spend part of Arbor Day sharing a great tree-centered book with your favorite child(ren)? Trees figure into a multitude of children's books, from the Magic Treehouse series by Mary Osborne Pope to the Nancy Drew mystery Message in the Hollow Oak.
You could start with a famous cartoon, such as Charles Schultz's Kite-Eating Tree -- remember how it devoured Charlie Brown's kite every spring? That sinister tree was pretty much a lollipop shape, and the carefully trimmed trees in the parking lot of my favorite grocery store are real-life descendants of that hungry tree. The real trees, however, have the charm of housing countless little birds -- I can hear the tree nearest the entrance from a block away, with a full chorus of assertive territorial proclamations.
Dr. Seuss introduced those glorious, doomed Truffula Trees in The Lorax (1971.) While others enjoyed Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree, I was in the Lorax camp, looking around at my own wasteful ways and figuring out how to get a little better-attuned to the natural world. That would have been far easier if the natural world hadn't included so many spiders and mosquitoes, of course, but I tried.
Children of Lorax-readers may have read Lynne Cherry's The Great Kapok Tree (1990), which introduces the same concepts of life on this planet as a tapestry, with all things interrelated in a beautiful whole. And, for the generation after that, the message is presented in Graeme Base's Uno's Garden and Helen Ward's The Tin Forest (2001.)
As a parent, I returned to the children's sections of bookstores and libraries, where I came across The Tale of Three Trees by Angela Elwell Hunt (1991.) This is a religious folktale so beautifully told and illustrated that I cannot read it aloud; I cry every single time. For me, the power of the story is due to the excellent, gentle storytelling and the realization that, as Richard Bach put it in Illusions: "What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly."
Looking for science and the life cycle? Try Mary Newell DePalma's A Grand Old Tree (2005,) with playful pictures and simple, straightforward text presenting the life and life-giving death of one particular tree. A great introduction to earth science for preschoolers, the book is also very appropriate in helping to explain other losses, gently and honestly.
To make the most of Arbor Day, why not pack a few favorite books -- the ones mentioned here, or any other favorites -- and enjoy them after a nature hike or a visit to the local arboretum or park? There was a little poem that began, "I think that I shall never see / A billboard lovely as a tree..." -- and that goes for illustrations, too. Take a day to visit a real, live tree or two. For some of us, they are the oldest living beings we will ever encounter.
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Comments: 31
(Don't forget Miss Suzy, in her tree...)
We have a relative of the kite-eating tree in the park here. Its diet mostly consists of frisbees, but I'm sure it enjoys an occasional kite our two. It looks really mean and grumpy too. In fact, I might turn into it tomorrow....
The Book Review
This is an excellent book. It has beautiful illustrations and has a great message about preserving the rainforest.
Also, an excellent non-fiction book for 3-7 year-olds is A Tree is Growing by Arthur Dorros. Good illustrations and facts (but not too many) and lots of labels for identifying different types of trees.
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These are great books for Arbor Day or any day.
This is a wonderful article with an appropriate theme! 10 plus.
One of the common elements of "disadvantaged" children is the poverty of reading materials, exposure to small vocabularies, and the lack of parental involvement in teaching basic language skills.
God bless all the parents who read to their children.
thanks for posting these great recommendations... a great stack for summer reading!
For older children, you might be interested in having a peek at the third book in the Tarragon Island series (Trouble on Tarragon Island, Sono Nis Press 2005). The theme of the book (a middle grade novel) is saving old growth trees. Here's the blurb from the publisher website:
Trouble on Tarragon Island
Heather Blake is horrified when her grandmother gets involved with the Ladies of the Forest, a radical group of protesters willing to do just about anything to save a stand of old-growth trees from the loggers' chainsaws. When the Ladies make a calendar, semi-nude photos of Granny and her friends hang on just about every fridge on Tarragon Island. Things get even worse when protesters get arrested and tempers flare. Without question, there's a crisis in the Tarragon Woods, and the solutions are far from clear-cut.
Inspired by actual conflicts played out on logging roads and protest camps in British Columbia, Trouble on Tarragon explores issues facing many communities today. Like many other citizens, Heather must grapple with some difficult questions. What are the avenues open to a citizen displeased with government policies? Can one ever break the law with a clear conscience? Is a protester a criminal? How can a journalist remain unbiased when personally involved with a story?
With a touch of wry humour, Nikki Tate has created a believable story of a young writer trying to make sense of the world around her. Fans of this series, and readers new to Tate's work, won't be able to put Trouble on Tarragon down.
"In this remarkable contemporary story, Nikki Tate scoops up the beating heart of the environmental struggle over BC public forests and presents it to her young readers with verve and audacity. In their efforts to save a rainforest, grandmothers pose naked, granddaughters freak out, little boys get arrested and the community becomes polarized over the clear cutting of public forests. A great read, one I would wish for every Canadian child."
—Betty Krawczyk, author of Lock Me Up or Let Me Go