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Summary
Summary
When a family wants to cut down a tree to build a house, what happens to the animals' nests and burrows? Can a tree be home to everyone?
For the rabbits, birds, and squirrels, the big tree is home. But then come two new arrivals with wonderful plans, all ready to create their dream house. What will it mean for the animal families if their tree is cut down? With empathy and imagination, Neal Layton offers a hopeful outlook in this simple and powerful fable about the harmony of the natural world.
Author Notes
Neal Layton has illustrated more than forty books for children. His books have won the U.K.'s prestigious Nestlé Smarties Children's Book Prize and been short-listed for many others. The Tree was inspired by his vacations in a forest in France. He says, "It was during these visits, while sitting among the trees and animals, watching my family grow up around me, that I wrote this book." Neal Layton lives in England.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-This sweet and simple story (only 38 words) conveys an important and powerful message. A man and woman come upon a plot of land for sale. They make plans to build a magnificent home, bring in their supplies, and eagerly set to work. However, when the couple begin to cut down a tree that is right in the middle of their plot, they find out it is already home to birds, squirrels, an owl, and rabbits. When they realize that they would deprive other living things of a home in order to make one of their own, they are contrite. Their solution is original and charming and could provide discussion fodder among readers of a variety of ages on a wide range of topics, such as respect for nature and the concept of ownership. The pen-and-ink illustrations work seamlessly with the text in this straightforward but important story. The wordless spread depicting the couple's anguish over the devastation they have wrought is surprisingly moving given the cartoonlike nature of the illustrations. Suitable for independent reading, this title is also ideal for group sharing and a perfect choice for Earth Day presentations. VERDICT Large and small collections should make room on their shelves for this lovely offering.-Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A tree in a deep rural clearing proves to be a small village in jeopardy.On a piece of land for sale deep in the rolling, uninhabited hills of somewhere, there grows a fine evergreen, which stands tall on recto. On verso, readers see a couple (maybe up to six) words in size 72 font: "A tree, // a bird's nest," and so on as pages turn until readers have met the owls, the squirrels, and the rabbits who burrow down in the tree's roots. Along comes a white couple, with blueprints. Red flag. The plot is small, and the tree stands in the middle of it. Out comes the two-man saw (though in this case it is a one-man-one-woman saw), until the man and woman realize there is a significant community above (and below, knowing rabbits). Evident in the illustrations but not explicit in the text, the plans are changed. (Layton has given the illustrations an old-time feel, the pen-and-wash pictures by turns moody, loose, and substantial.) Suddenly the tree is bandaged, the various animal abodes repaired, and a balconied treehouse now sits snugly about halfway up. Harmony is not brain surgery, Layton's story suggests; there are no squatters in nature, just those who inhabit. A feather-light tribute to finding common groundor make that common air space. (Picture book. 2-5) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Land for Sale reads a sign beside a tall, spindly-looking fir tree standing in the countryside. A bird family and a squirrel family nest in its branches. Owls shelter in a hollowed-out section of the trunk, while beneath the ground lies a rabbit family's burrow. A cheerful couple arrives with plans for a grand house, but when they start sawing the tree, the nests tumble to the ground. Stricken, they reconsider and then begin repairing and improving their new neighbors' abodes. For themselves, they build a modest tree house, a happy home. This story of compassion is told with brevity and illustrated with finesse. Deftly drawn in pen and brightened with watercolor washes, the illustrations zoom in for close-ups of the animals' homes and then pull out to show a broader view of the setting. With just a few words in large type on each double-page spread, the spare text leaves plenty of room for kids to observe, imagine, and talk about what's happening in each scene. This appealing picture book is just right for reading aloud.--Phelan, Carolyn Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
BUT FOR THE fact that it has corners, it would be easy to mistake a well-built picture book for an egg. How so much life lives in such small quarters is a wonder that never grows old. So, what a joy to find these sturdy morsels in my nest: four picture books that remind us anew that inspiration is a fledgling of process. If Neal Layton were a bird, he'd be part of that genus that includes John Burningham and Quentin Blake, because it is with similar delight and abandon that he warbles and flits about his own branches. It's blue dawn as we glide toward the cozy conifer at the center of Layton's lovely new book, "The Tree." You likely don't yet hear the rumble of the pickup winding down the road, or the distant echo of Robert Burns's "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men" bouncing off a purple yawn of mountains. And we still can't read the tilted sign next to the tree . . . until the sun has risen. "land for sale." Layton arranges two squinty clouds and a frowning fence around his giant nose of a tree to let us know how to feel about this. But the sadness is fleeting, because we soon discover the lovable families who call this tree home. It's filled with googly-eyed rabbits, sheepish owls, eager squirrels and birdsong. And then the pickup pulls up with its rumpled passengers, and their wooden crates, and their giant saw and their "wonderful plan" for a dream home of their own. When their sawing causes a bird's nest to fall, the newcomers stare thoughtfully at the chicks singing at their feet, much as Burns must have stared at that mouse's nest he turned up with his plow two centuries earlier, and which inspired his poem. But what follows aren't simply words of regret (or sympathy) about nature's vulnerability in the face of progress. "The Tree" turns out to be Layton's unapologetically hopeful plan for how mice and men (and bunnies and owls and squirrels and birds) might live happily together going forward. The tree at the center of Deborah Freedman's dreamy "This House, once" is "a colossal oak tree about three hugs around and as high as the blue." It is now the small wooden door of a pointy little house. Freedman (who was once an architect) is not offering us a plan for some future home, however. Instead the book is a blueprint for mindfulness and gratitude for the homes in which we already live. With the wooziness that comes from sitting close to a fire, and in a whisper of colors that have the hypnotic allure of bruises, Freedman deconstructs and rebuilds her toasty house. "These stones," she says, laying the foundation, "were once . . . deep asleep, tucked beneath a blanket of leaves." "These bricks," she adds, framing the door, "were once mud that oozed around roots." We turn the page to find a small cat we've been tailing from the title spread playing in the mud with a giddy frog, a shy turtle and a bird. The cat ends up back at its home, where a tiny person holds the door open. I started to feel lightheaded when the house began dreaming about its own deconstructed past, but so long as the embers of Freedman's incantation continue to glow, I'm in no rush. Which is a good thing, because if there's anything Kevin Henkes loves to do, it's make you wait. Following in the wake of his award-winning "Waiting," Henkes's latest confection, "Egg," is the story of four henless pastel eggs, laid safely inside a big brown border, which houses the warm white of each spread. Three eggs adorably hatch on cue into adorable chicks. one remains a green mystery. Peck. What's inside? Peck peck. Even the chicks want to know. It is only through patience . . . peck . . . and persistence . . . peck . . . that the fourth egg finally reveals its secret: a smiling baby alligator! Without visible teeth! Who needs teeth in a world seemingly made of marzipan? still, the minty interloper looks like it could bite, so the chicks fly off and the alligator finds itself adorably alone and miserable. It's only after the chicks realize the alligator poses no threat that they decide they could maybe be friends. Which is exactly what happens. In the hands of someone less generous and wise, "Egg" might taste like a pack of Easter Peeps with a Cracker Jack surprise and a paper fortune, but Henkes makes it a candy-colored koan, equal parts kaiseki and comic strip. Though its appearance may seem as familiar as the setting sun, this book's full flavor is as toothsome and elusive as tomorrow. On its effortless surface - a white page peppered lightly with wildflowers and weeds - the exuberant "A Greyhound, a Groundhog" is about exactly what its title suggests: a delectable groundhog and a lithe greyhound. But what Emily Jenkins and Chris Appelhans's lyrical collaboration is really about is the intoxicating thrill of friendship, and the boundless joy of play: play between improbable friends; play between color and empty space; play between language and meaning; and play between author and illustrator. In her dedication Jenkins, who wrote the words, credits Ruth Krauss and her "A Very Special House" as being the seed from which her own text took root. What Jenkins surely knows but doesn't say is that Krauss had a very game dance partner in some guy named Sendak, and that it is in the drunken waltz between Krauss's words and Sendak's pictures that their book's real magic resides. Which is equally true of the fetching footwork Appelhans and Jenkins have cobbled together . . . together. Four cheeps and cheers for life's green mysteries! ROWBOAT WATKINS is the author and illustrator of "Rude Cakes." His next picture book, "Pete With No Pants," comes out in May.
