The endpages are decorated with delicate green tracings of a variety of leaves and the title page features the growth cycle of a deciduous tree, from the seed planted by a curly-haired, dark-skinned child to a young tree, its roots spreading throughout the ground.
The pages explore the similarities between trees and people, encouraging readers to "Be a tree" by stretching to the sky, spreading their roots deeply, and absorbing sun and rain. As well as these comparisons are more scientific comparisons of bodies, such as a spread showing the tracery of nerves and veins in a body compared to the cells and structure inside a tree and the accompanying text reads "In your heart's center/is your pith, keeper of nutrients/when you were a sapling."
The book continues the analogy until it compares "immigrant trees" to a lonely man with a bag, hunched on a bench in a park with illustrations in dull greens and browns.. Open out the pages to a joyous spread of springtime and the man is joined by a woman with a headscarf and two curly-haired children while the park fills with a diverse array of people, many of them previously pictured in the book, and the trees and flowers burst into bloom. The book goes on to compare the interconnected community of trees with a diverse array of a community of people, "So, be a tree./For together,/we are a forest."
An author's note talks about the science behind the book and the many benefits of trees. There are suggestions for supporting the forest, including recycling paper products, planting native trees, and fundraising for organizations. There are also suggestions for building the forest of human community, a detailed diagram of a tree, further reading, and a list of websites. The community building suggestions are where I have a real problem; or, rather, in my opinion publishing has a real problem. It shows most clearly in books that support environmentalism, conservation efforts, and community building. I've talked elsewhere about the problems with reducing complex and widespread environmental damage to a few simple (and not always scientifically-backed) things for people to do, but this I see as a serious privilege issue in publishing.
The suggestions for building community are to visit people at a nursing home, which is fine. Then it suggests "Set up a buddy system with the special needs program at your school." Then it suggests making care kits for homeless shelter residents, having a supply drive for a local animal shelter, sending cards to soldiers overseas, and planting native flowers in "your garden and neighborhood."
Stop and think about this. Approximately 13% of children in the United States have health-related special needs. Approximately 2.5 million children are homeless each year in the United States. 16% of children in the US live in poverty. These suggestions "other" those children and show just how much of an ivory tower publishing still remains. How would you feel if you were a child with special needs, a homeless child, a child living in poverty, and read these suggestions which essentially place you, the reader, as an "other" and a project to be helping in the community?
I'd like to see more acknowledgement that not all children are privileged, that children with special needs are not a separate species to be kind to, that environmental issues are complex and can't be resolved by a few simple tips. I would rather see open-ended suggestions or ideas for brainstorming than these specific suggestions that other large groups of the population. My only consolation is that most kids are unlikely to get to the back of the book and read the back matter.
Verdict: A beautiful exploration of trees and the building and growth of community. Although I am frustrated and disappointed by the back matter, I don't particularly blame the author, I think it's an endemic issue to the publishing industry as a whole and something that it may take generations to change and resolve. I would like to see book creators thinking more about their own privilege and whether these kinds of suggestions "other" people in their communities though.
ISBN: 9781419744228; Published March by Harry N. Abrams; Borrowed from another library in my consortium
No comments:
Post a Comment