Book Bundles: Trees, Seeds, and Gravity

(2) K-3 Luyken's (My Heart, rev. 3/19) latest offering will bolster her strong reputation as an artist skilled in making tangible the intangible qualities of lovingkindness, resilience, and creativity. Here, a tree represents a child's oneness with nature and her sense of self within a warm community of friends. Cover art depicts a child looking up at an apple on a branch, its red form visually echoed in her rosy cheek. Reds, pinks, and golds predominate (though spreads devoted to sky and water serve up a contrasting vivid, cool cerulean) on spreads that continue the visual association between girl and tree. Meanwhile, the spare, lyrical text details their connection, and she is soon accompanied by other children clambering on "branch and trunk," their bodies merging with the colors and forms of the leaves, bark, and blossoms in the softly textured, painterly illustrations. The visual effect underscores the text's message of interconnectedness, expanding to recognize not just "the tree in me" but the sun and sky, too. The overall meditative quality of the book culminates with the acknowledgment of others' oneness with the world.

Reviewer: Megan Dowd Lambert

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Yas Imamura. Redding gives readers the biography of a tree--the very tree under which Isaac Newton sat when he began thinking about gravity and motion. Expressive language details its growth: "The tree's tips ballooned with blossoming buds, swarmed by bees until petals fell away to reveal growing apples." When, circa 1665, Newton observes that one of those apples falls straight down, he connects that force with the force that keeps the moon in the sky, a thought process explained in the illustrations rather than in the animated text ("Isaac came up with the answer: gravity! Universal gravity!"). The tree becomes a tourist attraction until lightning strikes around 1820. Still, a living root remained, and as science branched out in many directions, so did the tree; in modern times it inspired such visitors as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. And, in 2010, almost two hundred years after the lightning storm, scientists took a piece of the tree up to the International Space Station. There it floated, prompting this enthusiastic conclusion: "Nearly 350 years later, Isaac was right!" Rich shading marks the earth tones in the illustrations, with the browns particularly resembling highly polished wood. Appended with brief biographies of Newton, Einstein, and Hawking; a timeline of Newton's life; and a bibliography.

Reviewer: Betty Carter

(2) K-3 Translated by Julie Cormier. Vast profiles five different ways plants "move" their seeds, shoots, and fruit to new locations as part of their reproductive cycles. Seeds from dandelions and trees "fly away" or "fall"; the tendrils of strawberries "creep" across the ground; and animals transport burdocks that "cling" to their fur and berries that "get eaten" by birds and mice. The relocations are revealed across a mix of panel series and full-page illustrations, starting with the seeds attached to their parent plants, then moving step-by-step toward their final destinations. The clever graphic design employs the same purple hue throughout for the parts of the plants that don't move, providing silhouette-like outlines of leaves and stems. In contrast, the parts that move are shown in contrasting hues that make them easy to see as they fly through the air or travel through the digestive systems of the animals that disseminate them. Each of the five sections ends on a page filled with examples of other plants that employ the same movement.

Reviewer: Danielle J. Ford