100 books like Toby and the Secrets of the Tree

How can something as small as an acorn grow to the height of a skyscraper? Treemendous: Diary of a Not Yet Mighty Oak illustrates the life of a tiny acorn growing up to be a tall oak tree. It uses delightful and humorous text and adorable illustrations to communicate the basic science behind this phenomenal happening in nature. What a wonderful way to learn about our nation’s tree.

Red, a monoecious oak tree, narrates this luminous and beautifully illustrated novel. Red is two hundred and sixteen rings old and happily provides shelter for seven opossums, four raccoons, five owls, six skunks, and a witty crow named Bongo. Together, Red and the animals concoct a plan to support Samar, a girl whose family has just moved into the neighborhood. Samar hasn’t made any friends yet, and she’s feeling sad and lonely. Wishtree is about inclusion and community, but at its heart, it’s a love song to the trees and creatures that call urban areas home. Have tissues ready: Samar’s comforting middle-of-the-night visits to Red and Bongo will have readers wiping away a tear or two. 

Here’s a book to sample and savor again and again!

I loved the combination of poetry bolstered with clear, well-sourced nonfiction text on every single spread. This tribute song to forests is based on groundbreaking work about how trees create communities and sustain the places where they grow.

While placing trees in the context of the “wood wide web,” this book transports us to a glorious range of places. Beeches in Germany, an elm tree in Central Park, tualang saplings in Malaysia, kapoks in Brazil, silver birch in China, diverse forests in Colorado—all of it brings us closer to the wisdom of trees in the places we each call home.  

The title is a refrain that rings around the world, as the children in two families, in two settings, plant a tree.

As in my book, time is a driving element here, bringing to light the cumulative effects of planting trees. Those effects, from clean air and soil retention to the bounty of fruit and the blessings of shade, are beautifully realized in the final page that brings it all back to the young characters and by inference, to the reader.

A gorgeously illustrated book detailing how trees changed our world. It is a book exactly to my liking as it perfectly blends scientific information with fascinating stories and insights, making it highly interesting for both the laymen and the professional. It takes pride in being placed on my coffee table where I keep on randomly opening it several times a week, discovering something new every time. This way I am still joyfully reading it, although I have already acquired it months ago. 

Soon to be a musical, this enchanting story is about an eleven-year-old girl who doesn’t know she can sing until she gets to know an oak tree in her garden, Annie Oakly, who becomes her best friend and is actually a tree spirit. As the story unfolds, and Emma is confronted with family troubles, she learns of her own vital role in saving the trees; Emma must sing! 

I’m recommending this book because of my own love for both trees and music. In fact, I often sing to the redwoods where I live and sometimes imagine they are singing along with their rustling squeaks and creaks. The author tells a story grounded in everyday problems, such as living with a grandmother with dementia, while bringing the fantastical and magical world of nature vividly alive.

What’s not to love about a book structured as a tree? This is a vast, episodic novel that takes traditional storytelling and turns it on its head.

A cast of characters connect through stories that grow from seed to trunk to limb. I finished this long read and immediately wanted to start again. It’s the kind of book that rewards a second or third pass. Complex, rife with science and faith and desperate longing, this book is a celebration of the tree, a clarion call to return our attention to our roots before it is too late.

One of Powers’ characters asks, “What do all good stories do?” He answers, “They kill you a little. They turn you into something you weren’t.” I think that’s true of all of these books, and most definitely this one.

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.

I own hundreds of books on plants and trees. The two finest books written on American trees were both written by Donald Culross Peattie. His book on Western trees is amazing. When he looks at and writes about a particular tree, he mentions everything about it. What it looks like, where it grows, how big it gets, what it is used for, what animals, birds, insects use this tree. He also mentions in detail how it flowers, sets seeds, grows….he misses next to nothing. Totally recommended! 

Kiernan is, without question, one of the best practitioners of dark weird fiction working today. I’ve been reading their work almost since I started writing myself and will happily – and gratefully – admit to the early influence on my own writing. While their short stories always held a greater attraction for me personally, The Red Tree is a powerful and ambitious novel that brings together everything I love about their work. Sarah Crowe is burned-out writer fleeing from all her life contains, including herself, and the old, isolated farmhouse chosen as a refuge proves to be precisely the opposite. There are stories nested within stories, autobiography threaded through metafiction, dread mingled with wonder, and a satisfying ambiguity that resists a neat resolution.