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Awards & Honors
First Prize, Information Book Award (The Children's Literature Roundtables of Canada)
Chosen as a Notable Canadian Non-Fiction Book for Children 1991 - Canadian Materials
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Description
This award-winning life of a tree children's book begins with a maple seedling emerging from an old fallen log in 1763. The tree grows and provides food and shelter to the animal life around it for 210 years until finally, too weak to stand, it falls to the forest floor. Eventually, a new life begins in the richness of its rotting wood.
The gloriously detailed illustrations, crowded with forest wildlife, reward close observation. In the backgrounds we see a visual history of the encroachment of civilization unfold - First Nations hunters on snowshoes, then a log cabin, a brick farmhouse, and finally a suburban neighborhood and contemporary children. An excellent life-cycle read-aloud for families and ecology units alike.
Reviews
"...certainly one of the best picture books of the year...a tour de force. The writing is crisp, evocative, informative, and deeply satisfying on many levels."
Kidscene
"Rarely does an introduction to forest ecology and the food chain have this power. Thornhill's paintbrush produces poetry."
Children's Book News
"This compelling presentation of the interdependency and rhythmic round of life will surely nourish readers."
Publisher's Weekly
"Thornhill evocatively identifies the textures, the sounds, and the sensations of the forest and its creatures - her forest lives."
Canadian Children's Literature
"...splendidly detailed...a long and beautifully observed look at one life within the natural world."
Quill & Quire
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