What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
This topic is about
Big Tree
SOLVED: Children's/YA
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SOLVED. Life of a tree, from tree's POV [s]
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1. Well, hot dog! That must be the one! 2. Yikes! The prices for it on Amazon... 3. Anyway, thanks! That was fast.
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Call it solved. It'll be a while, if ever, before I get a copy, and how many books about the life of a tree can there be? ;)
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Read it in third grade, in a school anthology that also included Owls In the Family, by Farley Mowat. The tree story was about, IIRC, a sequoia, or maybe a pine. Some kind of tree that lives long and grows tall. A lot of the plot points had to do with the tree's inability to move or do anything to affect what happened to it. For instance, a squirrel was preening herself, very satisfied with her sleek fur, and a seed cone popped off the tree and landed on the squirrel, splattering her with sap. The squirrel was furious, and the tree felt terrible, but it hadn't caused the cone to fall, and there was nothing it could do about the results. Later, there was a forest fire. All the animals ran for their lives, while the trees could do nothing but stand there, hoping the fire wouldn't reach them. The POV tree was somewhat scarred by the fire, but remained standing. (The person who started the other thread remembers it ending with the tree about to be cut down, before someone (environmentalists?) intervened. I don't remember that, but it sounds plausible.)
I read this in the late 1970s; don't know how old it was then. I remember at least one line drawing, but that may have been done only for the anthology, not in the original publication. Sure hope someone else remembers! (Hey, it only took 6 1/2 years for someone to solve the evil-blobs query!)