As a bare-bones winter gives way to the fresh green of spring, and with Earth Day on the horizon next month, now’s the perfect time to lean against a sturdy tree trunk with a book. These loving odes to our leafy friends explore their long, unhurried lives from seedling to sky-scraping giants, and the impact they have on the health of the planet and its inhabitants.
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“Maisy Loves Trees” by Lucy Cousins. (Ages infant through 3. Candlewick Press. $9.99.)
This bright and cheery board book — one of many in the Maisy universe — shows the cheerful mouse climbing trees, making art with leaves and admiring seasonal changes.
Along the way, it explains to the very youngest readers what trees are, how they grow and their wondrous variety — all in easy-to-understand language, delivered with enthusiasm, because “trees are so amazing! Maisy loves them all!”
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“Green: The Story of Plant Life on Our Planet” by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Emily Sutton. (Ages 5-8. Candlewick Press. $18.99.)
Sure, the average tree “doesn’t look like it’s doing very much.” But Nicola Davies’s exploration of plant life reveals an action-packed life of photosynthesis, respiration and growth.
She journeys back billions of years, to the first microbes that began pumping oxygen into Earth’s atmosphere, through seaweed, the first land plants and the first forests. Even as the burning of fossil fuels — themselves the remains of ancient swamps and forests — changes the planet, there remain “communities of plants: great green nations.”
The book urges readers to protect those plant communities, as they store up carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, because “green is the most important color in the world.”
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“Little Brown Nut” by Mary Auld, illustrated by Dawn Cooper. (Ages 5-8. Red Comet Press. $15.99. Due Tuesday.)
With enticing illustrations, this book lets a seed — a single Brazil nut, buried and forgotten by a forward-looking rodent — tell the story of its life and the many living things in whose lives it is entwined.
“Here I am under the ground, covered with leaves,” it says, but before long it is a seedling, then a young tree with a sloth hanging from its branches, then an adult tree with a harpy eagle’s nest. When it begins producing its own nuts — which can fall at nearly 50 miles per hour — the cycle begins again.
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“Everyone Starts Small” by Liz Garton Scanlon, illustrated by Dominique Ramsey. (Ages 4-8. Candlewick Press. $18.99. Due Tuesday.)
This poetic look at growth and change embraces the cycle of life through every stage, starting with the enthusiastic beginning, when “everyone sprouts and bursts and hatches and spreads.”
Water and Cloud do their thing as Tree patiently strives upward and reminds them, “It’s not a race.” Through wind, drought, fire and rain, Tree holds on, and as new life joins the rush to grow, the tree reminds them that it’s not a race, and “everyone wins.”
The gorgeous ode to ecosystems and the connection of all living things invites readers to tend to the world and to embrace it in all of its complexity.
Caroline Luzzatto has taught preschool and fourth grade. Reach her at luzzatto.bookworms@gmail.com
