In Seeming Silence

Humans have found a multitude of means to speak without uttering a sound.  Flashing lights can blink out messages using Morse Code.  Nautical flags, one for each of the twenty-six-letter alphabet, can spell out single words or phrases.  The American Sign Language or simple hand gestures can convey entire conversations with other individuals, and beckon or turn them away.  Eyes through a glance or steady stare silently signal thoughts and emotions.  

If humans can do this, imagine how more advanced communication is with living beings in the natural world.  The Wisdom of Trees: How Trees Work Together to Form a Natural Kingdom (Roaring Brook Press, March 2, 2021) written and illustrated by Lita Judge is an astounding. meaningful, and informative exploration of shared connections.  Working together for the common good is the key to survival and a flourishing society.

A Secret Kingdom

I am a single beech,

but I am not alone.

Together with my fellow trees,

we form a secret kingdom.

So begins our acquaintance with a world we think we understand but is much wider and deeper.  Beech trees can live for hundreds of years.  They have stories to tell.

Some we will never know, but people dedicated to the study of trees have expanded what they believe to be true.  Trees speak skillfully and silently.  Author and illustrator Lita Judge, through a series of fourteen poems deciphers what they are saying and supports the poems with factual discussions.

Trees may not have fiber optics, but they have fungi.  Deep underground trees and fungi work in tandem assisting each other in essential life-sustaining exchanges of food.  Fungi pass along messages from one tree to another.  Chemicals are launched into the air when trees feel they under attack from unwanted insects or munching animals.  Sometimes those chemicals attract other insects who will eliminate the threat.  It's almost like something out of fiction to discover giant, tall trees in a rain forest maintain their own climate while cleansing the air and dampening the dangers of global warming.  Did you know if a tree is in need, other trees will receive the distress signal and send help?

Trees are skilled gardeners, alternating years of abundant seeds in order to reproduce and feed animals at the same time.  They prepare for seasonal shifts, especially for the cold in winter and for the following sleep.  Did you know the length of daylight is a clock for some tree species? Fascinating.  Trees care for each other by helping the youngest unable to make their own food and stopping their spreading branches from crowding nearby trees.  There is more to the rings on a tree than exact age. 

Trees host animal homes in their trunks and under their roots and in any other place insects land, rest, and nest.  Like humans, trees age but they still give to the forest in exceptional ways.  Diverse forests are a necessity rather than uniform forests.  What might damage one specie will leave another unharmed.  Humans need to respect the need for diversity.  It ensures the continuation of a forest which in turn ensures our planet's survival.

Each poem penned by Lita Judge is a warm welcome from trees to their world.  These poems focus on different aspects of trees.  In a column on the right, Lita offers a description of the tree featured in the image on the left, using it to transition to a more complete explanation of the current topic.  Within this conversational commentary are specific details and sometimes named scientists and their discoveries.  Here is a poem and a partial passage.

We Are the Ghosts

My limbs and needles are gone,

and the warm body of a newborn deer

comes to rest within the ghost of my great trunk

that once touched the sky.

But underneath the soft litter

of fallen needles and dark soil, I still live,

surrounded by my kingdom

with their willingness to give. 

Life Beyond Death

A forest may continue to care for its

elder trees, even after the body of 

an ancient tree dies aboveground.

The roots are still alive and remain

a part of the community.  When this

five-hundred-year-old ponderosa pine

fell in eastern Oregon, USA, its trunk

and branches began decomposing,

sending its stored nutrients back into

the soil, while its roots continued 

to bring in water.  The hollowed-

out trunk became shelter to many

animals. Nearby younger trees,

exposed to more sunlight, grew

quickly to fill in the forest canopy.  . . .

On the open dust jacket readers are treated to two lush forest views.  On the right, the canopy of kapok trees frames the rich flora as parrots fly through their branches.  To the left, on the back, a doe, fawn, wild turkey, raccoon, and a squirrel enjoy the quiet of their woodland glen, a misty green in early morning light.  The main title text on the front is varnished and raised on matte-finished paper.

On the book case a single scene is spread between the left and right, crossing the spine flawlessly.  It is autumn with fewer leaves on the trees.  On the left the colors are cooler, blue hues and green.  On the right, the shades are more brown, gray and green.  Chickadees join a squirrel on the left.  An owl silently watches on the right, high above the ground.

The opening and closing endpapers are covered in a spring grass green.  On the initial title page tree trunks and branches form a circle around the four words.  Vegetation spreads along the forest floor.  On the formal title page, a two-page picture gives us a glimpse of an elder pine tree, arms gnarled and twisted extending skyward.  A full moon casts a blue light.  A lone owl sits on a limb on the right.

Opposite the dedication and publication information page, we read the first title and first sentence.  Beneath this is the single beech tree, still young, but enjoyed by two birds.  All these luminous images

were created with watercolor and pencil.

With each page turn, readers are shown another intricately detailed portrait.  We might be underground with roots and fungi and watching kits nestled in a den as their mother fox approaches above ground.  We might be close to wasps moving like aircraft to land on caterpillars destroying leaves on an elm tree.  We might hardly dare to breathe as a wolf moves through a dormant stand of silver birch in winter.

Lita Judge also places smaller illustrations within her columns on the right.  We see a giraffe munching on an umbrella thorn acacia.  There is a labeled depiction of one tree requesting help and another tree sending back the needed sugar.  A small inset shows us the difference between deciduous and coniferous trees.  Lita Judge realizes the need for images to enhance the text, giving a pictorial interpretation of her words.

One of my many favorite illustrations is for the passages above noted.  To the left of the text column bordered by a thin branch with a few scattered leaves, is a page and one-half page picture.  It is a close-up of the ancient tree now on the ground.  The trunk is cracked and hollow.  On the far left, two new saplings grow from the hollow.  In the main part of the hollow, a fawn is curled, sheltering until the return of its mother.  A squirrel scampers on the right near a new pine tree.  Behind the fallen tree, on the right, a trio of new saplings grows.  The green, brown, pale gray, and golden yellow palette generates a sense of calm and continuity. 

Regardless of the number of times you read The Wisdom of Trees: How Trees Work Together to Form a Natural Kingdom written and illustrated by Lita Judge, you will glean new information.  With each reading, your respect for these majestic beings increases.  At the close of the book is a lovely Author's Note describing the impact of one tree Lita visits whenever possible.  This is followed by extensive paragraphs on fungi, the years trees live and about the trees in this book.  Further items are included for each tree highlighted on the two title pages and within each section. Lita Judge continues with headings:

Forest Fire Suppression,

The Future Of Our Forests,

How You Can Help Our Forests,

and

A Note From The Publisher.

On the final page is a glossary, sources, and good websites for more information on trees and forests.  No collection, personal or professional, should be without a copy of this book.  I highly recommend it.

To learn more about Lita Judge and her considerable body of work, please visit her website by following the link attached to her name.  Lita Judge has accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  At School Library Journal A Fuse #8 Production, Lita Judge is interviewed by Elizabeth Bird, current Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system about this book.  A video (access below) is premiered.  At Scholastic's Ambassador of School Libraries, John Schumacher's Watch. Connect. Read., Lita Judge talks about the inspiration for this book.  At Macmillan, you can view interior illustrations.  Politics and Prose Bookstore on March 16, 2021 at 11:00 am is sponsoring an event with Lita Judge and this new title.

UPDATE:  On March 5, 2020 in a post on Facebook Lita Judge talks about her process in making this book (all her books).  She shares an early sketch.

Tiny To Tree-mendous

They are absolute to life on the planet providing much needed oxygen.  They supply homes, food, vantage points, and protection for a multitude of beings.  Water is necessary for their survival but they in turn protect the land when there is an overabundance of moisture.   If we watch, they reflect the status of our weather and of our climate.   

Numerous countries around the world at various times during the year set aside a day to celebrate the planting of these plants for the planet.  The Arbor Day Foundation in the United States has an initiative, The Time for Trees, to plant 100 million trees by 2020.  This week the country of Ethiopia made headlines when they planted 350 million trees in twelve hours.  Trees: A Rooted History (Abrams Books for Young Readers, April 9, 2019) written by Wojciech Grajkowski with artwork by Piotr Socha, and translation by Anna Burgess is a captivating exploration of everything about and related to trees.

Trees are the largest living things on Earth.  Next to a giant sequoia tree, a human being looks very small.  Even the dinosaurs that once lived on our planet could hide in its shadows!  Trees can be very old, too.  Some species can live for hundreds or even thousands of years.  Only a few humans live to be a hundred years old, but for most trees, a hundred years is just the beginning of their life.  An old oak tree alive today might have been living before your great-grandfather was born and might even live longer than your great-grandchildren.

With this first paragraph of four introducing us to the world of trees, we are swept up in the factual conversation.  Trees are defined from their trunk, to their branches and to their leaves.  Each year of life in a tree is marked by a ring seen when the tree is cut.  Not all trunks are formed the same.  One in particular is formed from a bundle of thin roots.  Leaves, in a variety of shapes and sizes, work with the roots to maintain the life of a tree.  Roots will do whatever it takes to stabilize the tree and work to gain essential elements.  Some roots look like stilts.  Others, like the red mangrove, come to the surface to get oxygen.  Did you know there is a tree, The Great Banyan, in Howrah, India with at least 3,700 tree trunks?

Trees have different functions in different seasons.  The loss of leaves keeps trees alive in winter and during the dry season.  Trees usually prefer their seeds to be planted away from the original tree so there is no competition for resources.  Birds consume seeds and they are planted through elimination.  Some seeds are not released except under extreme heat. Did you know the sandbox tree has fruit which explodes under certain conditions distributing the seeds over a wide range?

Endemic species of trees only grow in specific places set apart from the rest of the world.  The Pennantia baylisiana is only found on Three Kings Islands close to New Zealand.  There is one tree left, a female but through scientific procedures the seeds were able to be pollinated.  Amazing!  An entire section is devoted to baobabs.  Can you imagine one big enough to house a pub?

Trees are restaurants for all kinds of animals, insects, reptiles, mammals and even fungus. They are homes for mammals, insects, spiders, amphibians, and reptiles.  Each specie has a characteristic allowing it to access what trees offer as residences.  In that same respect trees provide protection when species mimic the trees' physical traits.  They can look like bark, branches, sticks, or leaves.  Did you know there is a butterfly which looks bright and alluring to attract a partner but when necessary lifts its wings to the underside to be drab and brown?

There is evidence of trees living millions of years ago.  We find their stories in fossils and in places like the petrified forest in Gilboa, New York.  The tallest trees in the world are the redwoods found on the western coast of the United States.  These and others are compared to manmade structures like the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben, The Great Pyramid and an ordinary single-story home.  Did you know the broadest tree grows in a church courtyard?

The age of trees is astounding.  There is one believed to be more than 80,000 years old.  From the rings of trees, we can pinpoint times in history when they were alive.  We then read and branch into lumberjacks and the tools of their trade, ancient buildings still standing constructed of wood, forms of transportation made of wood, wooden masks, wooden instruments and treehouses.  The art of bonsai and topiary are discussed.  The use of trees to explain evolution and families is presented along with trees in religion and myths, and stories.  We are left with the power of trees to sustain and thrive, how they function best as natural forests rather than planted by humans and how we must carefully consider the consequences of cutting down a tree.


Author Wojciech Grajkowski holds a doctorate in biology and lives in Warsaw, Poland.  His knowledge, dedication and enthusiasm for his subject is evident by the text containing the most interesting facts about the aspects of trees covered in this book.  The research necessary to furnish readers with this information is extensive.  Here is another passage translated by Anna Burgess.

However, there are even older trees in the world.  Pando, a quaking aspen in the state of Utah, is estimated to be at least 80,000 years old.  Pando is both a single tree and an entire forest at the same time.  It grew from a single seed, and new shoots began to grow up from its root system.  These shoots turned into new trunks, the roots kept spreading, and today this huge tree colony covers over 106 acres.  It is the heaviest living thing in the world.


The illustrative artwork by Piotr Socha as seen on the open book case is highly detailed and depicts many of the topics covered in this title.  As shown on the book case, a realistic color palette is used.  On the UK version of this book, a close-up of a tree being from folktales is featured on the front.  Those walking and talking trees as depicted in an interior image are moving toward the reader on the back of the case.  Both cases promise to inform and entertain.

On the opening and closing endpapers on a dark background rows of tiny trees and leaves create a pattern.  One of the treehouses similar to those found in West Papua is showcased on the initial title page.  On the formal title page people stand around a baobab tree.  They are like ants in comparison.

Each page turn is a design delight beginning with a Mexican "tree of life".  We see trees from around the world, cross-sections of trunks, leaves, root systems, a display of seeds, four pages of endemic species, baobabs, tree eaters and dwellers, camouflagers, and prehistoric trees.  Items are carefully labeled.  When discussing the tallest and broadest trees, contrasts present visual understanding.  The slice of an old tree with rings and points in history is graphic excellence.

The wooden buildings, modes of transportation, instruments and treehouses are portrayed authentically as are the bonsai and topiary. There is a bit of humor in some of the illustrations.  It is represented by the eyes on the humans and the animals.  All the illustrations span two pages for each dedicated topic with area remaining for a column on the left or right for the narrative.  Two fine lines, one darker than the other, frame the images.

One of my many, many favorite illustrations is for the subject, The Four Seasons. In the center is a large circular cross-section of dirt with roots stretching and intermingling.  Twelve trunks spread around and out from the ground on those two pages.  They are shown in all four seasons.  Different colored leaves are placed between the trunks.  Beyond the crowns of the trees are leaves and seeds from the various trees.  It's a breathtaking display of a circle of life.


Trees: A Rooted History written by Wojciech Grajkowski and translated by Anna Burgess with art by Piotr Socha is a stunning work of nonfiction.  For a dedicated tree person or anyone wanting to browse a portion at a time, this book is highly recommended for your personal and professional collections.  Readers will be coming back to this book repeatedly.  (I had to have both the US and UK versions for my collection.)

To learn more about Piotr Socha and Wojciech Grajkowski, please access the publisher's website.  At Thames & Hudson you can view interior illustrations. You might enjoy this BBC video about the African Great Green Wall.




Be sure to visit Kid Lit Frenzy hosted by educator Alyson Beecher to view the titles selected this week by other participants in the 2019 Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge.

From a Blaze of Brilliance to a Blanket of White

With every gust of wind they rain down faster.  Swirls of gold, red, orange, brown and faded green fall.  A patchwork pattern of overlapping leaves covers the grass.  These colorful showers signal the passage of time in autumn 2017.  Only thirty-eight days remain until the arrival of the winter solstice.

There are now entire trees with bare branches lifting toward crystal blue skies one day and cloudy, gray vistas the next day.  September and October are memories.  Full of Fall (Beach Lane Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division, August 29, 2017) written and illustrated by April Pulley Sayre represents through poetic phrases and her signature photography the changes we witness as one season passes into the next.

September sun 
is low in the sky.

So long, summer.
Green, goodbye!

Whether you look at a large landscape as you travel down a path or road or focus on a single leaf in your own backyard, they herald change.  They are a reflection of what was and what will be.  The individual shapes of each tree are now outlined in their respective hues.

Shades of yellow, gold, orange and red hang like Nature's jewels on rough boughs of brown.  A canopy of color provides shelter from sun or rain.  Ponds, streams, rivers and lakes capture the array.

Run your hands over the bark on trunks.  Close your eyes and feel a single leaf or hold one up to the light filtering through the trees.  What message do they bring?

Soon the assistance leaves supply to trees is finished.  They let them go.  Now they nurture the dirt and water in a necessary cycle.  Their brilliance fades.  It's coming.  Snow.


As an astute observer of the world in which we live, April Pulley Sayre asks us, through her words, to notice the seasonal shift.  During those ninety days as our world spins from summer's end to autumn and then to winter, many small events contribute to the grand scheme.  Each one plays a significant part.

A series of phrases are joined by her rhyming words.  Some only have one or two words.  Others have six or seven. The cadences they create invite us to join her as we walk through the days of autumn.  Here is another sample passage.

Trees are ready.
Twigs let go.

Leaves slip
and spin.

Wind sweeps---
leaves blow!


Beginning with the opened, matching dust jacket and book case, we experience the full majesty of the transformation of autumn.  As you run your fingers over the front of the jacket, the title text is raised.  The large maple leaf has been given a matte finish in contrast to the glossy background.  It's as if we are touching a real leaf.  To the left, on the back, a squirrel scampers along a downed branch among a carpet of fallen yellow and brown leaves. 

The opening and closing endpapers are a rich, rusty orange.  On the title page an ancient stump, rings ragged and wide, provides a background for fallen leaves and text.  With each page turn a photograph raises our awareness of the variations revealed during this season. 

The point of view, through her camera lens, has us gazing through a field of browning grasses, light tipping the tops, watching closely as a squirrel grasps grass with edges blurred, or standing on the side of a pond, gasping in awe at the opposite shore lined with red, orange and yellow trees, their hues reflected in the water.  Some of the pictures span two pages and others are group by two or three.  The multiple illustrations on two pages are separated by thin white lines.  The placement of text is perfection.

One of my many favorite pictures spans two pages.  We are looking along a rough trunk of a tree upward as the branches stretch from page edge to page edge.  Patches of blue sky can be seen through the tiny yellow, gold and slightly green leaves.  It's absolutely exquisite.


April Pulley Sayre has a gift as a master poet and photographer.  She weaves words and images together in Full of Fall to fashion a sensory experience for readers.  This title, with the companion books, Raindrops Roll and Best in Snow, should be in every professional and personal collection.  At the close of the book two pages offer scientific explanations for particular phrases relative to leaves.  April Pulley Sayre also talks about Fall around the world and Never the same show.  She includes resources on the final page, an image of two beautiful leaves on bark.

To learn more about April Pulley Sayre and her other work, please visit her website by following the link attached to her name.  You will enjoy the backstory associated with this title.  At the publisher's website you can view several beginning interior pages along with the explanation pages at the close of the book. April Pulley Sayre is interviewed at PictureBookBuilders about this title.

Reaching Upward

An hour ago, standing on my front porch as the sky lightened with a new day, the air was literally filled with bird song.  Trees reaching astounding heights line the yards of many homes in our neighborhood.  These trees were filled with our avian friends calling us awake.  Their roots run deep keeping the leaves green even though we need rain.

It's easy to imagine them when they were younger providing space for young adventurers to climb among their branches, perhaps even to the top to see the world from a different perspective.  As a breeze blew through those branches, the child hiding among the leaves gently swayed too.  In an informative title and tribute to the influence trees bring to our planet and to us, author Nikki Tate as part of the Orca Footprints series wrote Deep Roots: How Trees Sustain Our Planet (Orca Publishing, February 9, 2016).

No matter where you live, even if it's in a big city, chances are you won't be far from a tree or two.  

Continuing with her introduction Tate concludes:

In Deep Roots, we'll have a look at why trees just might be our best friends, barometers of how we are looking after our planet, and our partners as we move forward to create a healthier world.

Within four chapters titled Earth, Air, Water and Fire we are educated as to the value and remarkable attributes of trees. Each chapter is divided into between eight and ten sections.

One of the tallest trees in the entire world makes its home in the Redwood National Park in California.  When these large sentinels die or any tree falls, they continue to sustain the earth providing food for essential insects and invertebrates.  Roots from trees act as a filtering system and a freeway system.  Details are given to us about the importance of replanting when trees are harvested.  Did you know that tree rings show us more than age?  They can inform scientists as to the rate and type of climate change.

Trees are carbon sinks absorbing huge amounts of CO2 releasing oxygen in return.  In the canopies of tree giants whole communities live, communities which most of us will never see due to their heights.  What do you know about baobabs?  Why are they known as the Tree of Life?  The positive emotional impact of looking at trees and being among trees is supported by studies.

If you have never seen trees as rain makers before now, you will after understanding this facet of the water cycle.  The Great Green Wall is an enormous project to stop the spread of the Sahara Desert.  The volume of trees estimated to be planted is mind-boggling.  A cycle of salmon swimming back to their origin, bears waiting and feeding on them and the growth of trees along the Pacific Northwest is completely fascinating.

Man-made fires, unless controlled for a distinct function, are never good for our forests but they and those caused by lightning strikes do serve a purpose.  Heat causes certain seeds to be released from cones and ash has many uses; a soil enhancer, a pest deterrent and an ingredient in soap making.  For countless years the wood from trees has been used as fuel.  Trees yield themselves for transportation in the making of roads and vessels on water, for food, for homes and for the air life needs.

By dividing the narrative into four separate chapters and then sections within the chapters, Nikki Tate broadens our knowledge of trees in smaller, manageable portions.  Outside of the main narrative she includes seven Try This! columns such as asking us to commemorate a significant occasion by planting a tree.  She supplies eight Forest Fact insets such as

A tree planter in the Canadian bush can plant 1,600 to 5,000 new tree seedlings every day.

In four Wood Works she advises us further as to how wood is beneficial in very specific incidences.

In her I ♥ Trees paragraphs, all eight, we are privy to the very personal aspect trees have played in the life of Nikki Tate.  She shares with readers the influence of trees planted on her farm, a special tree commemorating an event, trees and gardening, tree climbing, remembering particular trees, and children's literature and trees. Here is one of those paragraphs.

For as long as I can remember I have loved climbing trees.  Even though I am usually afraid of heights, for some reason I always feel quite safe when I'm sitting up in the branches of a tree.  My old apple trees are a lot of fun to climb, especially early in the fall when their branches are full of apples.  I never get tired of climbing up into branches, reaching out for an apple and taking a bite.  Yum!

Throughout the title, pages are replete with photographs in a variety of sizes, all captioned.  Line drawings of branches, logs, trunks, root systems and camp fires are carefully placed to enhance the text. The backgrounds on divisional pages are textured mirroring wood grain.


Deep Roots: How Trees Sustain Our Planet written by Nikki Tate is a highly enlightening title.  Things you may have already known are supported with further knowledge.  You will learn many new important pieces of information.  Only with greater understanding from nonfiction picture books such as this volume can we educate ourselves to becoming better stewards for our planet.  This is highly recommended.  In addition to the table of contents in the front, print and website resources, a glossary and an index are included at the end.

To learn more about Nikki Tate please visit her website by following the link attached to her name.  She has an account on Twitter @writergrrrl


Each week I enjoy joining other bloggers and reading about their selections in the 2016 Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge hosted by educator Alyson Beecher at Kid Lit Frenzy.  Make sure you view their choices for this week.

Earth's Heart Beats In Her Trees

Fortunate are those of us who, if they so choose, can walk among the trees.  When I walk along the Lake Michigan shoreline skirted by trees or up the winding paths among the hills densely forested, all sights and sounds of the busy world are gone.  It's as if time holds its breath; the trees watch in silence lending me their knowledge of decades past and the peace of endurance.

From 2004 through 2006 The United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress was Ted Kooser.  Mr. Kooser, the recipient of numerous awards, was given the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for his title, Delight and Shadows (Cooper Canyon Press, 2004).  One would not be amiss in speaking his name closely followed by the words national treasure. 

Early this spring Candlewick Press released a picture book written by Ted Kooser illustrated with the signature artwork of Jon Klassen.  House Held Up By Trees chronicles the lives of a family, their home and the nearby woods.  Two worlds, the one formed by the hand of man, the other by nature, exist side by side.

When it was new, the house stood alone on a bare square of earth.  There was a newly planted lawn around it, but not a single tree to give shade in summer or to rattle its bare twigs in the winter cold.

Like so many tracts of land, this had been cleared of trees to make way for a different kind of life.  The dwelling was home to a man, his son and daughter.  On either side of their lot the woods, abundant with growth in all stages and populated with animals was a realm of discovery and delight for the two children.

As the years passed the ever vigilant father would make sure his lawn was picture perfect, careful to not allow the growth of any tree seeds carried there by the winds.  The boy and girl grew into a young man and woman leaving their elder father to pursue their own lives.  In time he came to the realization that living alone and caring for the home and its picture perfect lawn was more than he cared to do.

Without his persistent plucking, tufts of grass grew around the For Sale sign stationed along the road, seeds landed and sprouted into tiny trees.  With no one willing to purchase the home, it fell into disrepair as years passed.  Saplings had found fertile ground along the sides of the house growing larger with every spin of the earth. 

Soon what man had made began to crumble but not fall; the arms formed by nature holding it upright.  The house held in the leafy embrace was no longer bound to its cement roots.  As the trees grew stretching skyward, the house with the bare square of earth, the home of the father, his son and daughter, rose into the air.

Through his choice of words, an economy of language, Ted Kooser brings to this story of trees, a house, a man, a boy and a girl, the same sense of quiet one feels when walking through a forest.  As the narrative unfolds, through his more detailed descriptions of the woods surrounding the home, Kooser fills readers with a sense of anticipation, a quiet waiting.  His honest look at the passage of time is not without a tinge of sadness as the people age and the home decays but the continued cycle of flowers, seeds and trees is as uplifting as his conclusion.

Illustrations formed digitally and in gouache beautifully capture the soul of the story.  The cover, a variation in color and focus of one of the final two-page spreads, is like a question needing to be answered.  Endpapers in pale, cool green show small winged seeds floating along on an imagined wind.

Muted greens, browns, spots of rusty red or a sky awash in tints of the palest blue or sunset rose are Jon Klassen's choices for this story.  Details create a feeling of nostalgia and loneliness; the house's front door windows, the push lawn mower, a glimpse of the table inside a window set for one or the man seated alone outside watching the sun on the horizon.  All the visuals are two-page spreads with added interest in the angle or perspective.  Most of the time the reader is an observer but at other times its as if the floating seeds are watching the activities around the home below.

House Held Up By Trees (Candlewick Press) written in prose that reads like poetry by Ted Kooser with illustrations by Jon Klassen is a gentle journey into the measurement of time through the ticking clock of nature; absolutely perfect in every way.

I believe this book would make for meaningful discussions.  Why was the man always maintaining his lawn instead of exploring with his children? Where is the children's mother?  How do readers feel about the choice of the man to build his home there?  I really like a book, such as this title, that makes me think beyond the story.  Why is it that illustrator Jon Klassen chose certain details for his pictures?