Why am I passionate about this?
I was born and grew up in India. As a child, I once planted a mango seed and watched it sprout and grow into a sapling. We moved away after that but I always wondered what might have become of that little tree. I remembered that long-ago experience when I was writing my picture book, Out of the Way! Out of the Way! in which a boy, a tree, and a road all grow together. The tree is central to that book, so I picked five picture book titles that also center trees.
Uma's book list on picture books about trees
Why did Uma love this book?
Trees and us. We’re bound together from breath to shelter and beyond, bound together in every way. That’s the truth of this poem in words and pictures from author-illustrator Corinna Luyken.
The words are as delicate as the rustle of leaves but they’re also completely centered on the child reader. Even the punctuation is placed with care, adding pause and breath, mediating the transition from shade to light, as if the words and their accessories were meant to float off the page as the text is read out loud.
1 author picked The Tree in Me as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 4, 5, 6, and 7.
Through poetic text and exquisite illustrations of children reveling in nature, this picture book explores the various ways we as human beings are strong, creative, and connected to others. Each of us is like a tree, with roots and fruit, and an enduring link to everything else in nature. "The tree in me is strong. It bends in the wind, and has roots that go deep... to where other roots reach up toward their own trunk-branch-crown and sky."
As Corinna Luyken did in her award-winning My Heart, she again provides an invigorating conversation-starter that contains a world of truths -…