The Tree: An Environmental Fable

by Neal Layton, Neal Layton (Illustrator)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763689520
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	02/07/2017
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	420,609
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 11.50(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	2 - 5 Years

About the Author

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.

Editorial Reviews

…lovely…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 New York Times Book Review - Rowboat Watkins

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.
—The New York Times Book Review

This sweet and simple story (only 38 words) conveys an important and powerful message...Suitable for independent reading, this title is also ideal for group sharing and a perfect choice for Earth Day presentations. Large and small collections should make room on their shelves for this lovely offering.
—School Library Journal (starred review)

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.
—Booklist Online

A feather-light tribute to finding common ground—or make that common air space.
—Kirkus Reviews

A delightful story perfectly complemented with fun, expressive illustrations, this seemingly simple story offers reflective thought on empathy and learning to live harmoniously with all living things.
—Reading Eagle (from Kendal Rautzhan's "Books to Borrow")

Layton’s fable offers a simple, thought-provoking message on humans sharing the natural environment with other species.
—Literacy Daily

From the Publisher

★ 03/01/2017
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

School Library Journal

2016-12-26
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 ground—or make that common air space. (Picture book. 2-5)

Kirkus Reviews