Puss Reboots: Blog: June 2010: The Great Kapok Tree

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Reviews:
All Aboard the Dinotrain by Deb Lund
Are You Afraid Yet? by Stephen James O'Meara
Bailey's Day by Robert Haggerty
A Brief History of Time by Shaindel Beers
Cat Heaven by Cynthia Rylant
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
A Dark, Dark Tale by Ruth Brown
Dead End by Helen R. Myers
Dreamstone by D. A. Hendrickson
The Electric Church by Jeff Somers
The Essential Basho by Basho and translated by Sam Hamill
Excuse Me... Are You a Witch? by Emily Horn
Farewell Atlantis by Terry Bisson
Freckle Juice by Judy Blume
Grampa's Zombie BBQ by Kirk Scraggs
The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry
How to Host a Killer Party by Penny Warner
The Kayla Chroincles by Sherri Winston
The Ladies' Paradise by Émile Zola
Little (Grrl) Lost by Charles de Lint
Little Quack's Hide and Seek by Lauren Thompson
The Man Who Did Something About It by Harvey Jacobs
Owly Volume 1: The Way Home and The Bittersweet Summer by Andy Runton
Princess Ben by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Revolutionary War on Wednesday (Magic Tree House #22) by Mary Pope Osborne
The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
The Soul of the Rhino by Hemanta Mishra
Spot Visits His Grandparents by Eric Hill
The Texicans by Nina Vida
The Thanksgiving Door by Debby Atwell
Twister on Tuesday (Magic Tree House #23) by Mary Pope Osborne
Two Little Trains by Margaret Wise Brown and Leo Dillon
The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman
Veracity by Laura Bynum

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The Great Kapok Tree: 06/07/10

Stories with a strong environmental message lend themselves to children's picture books. The Great Kapok Tree by Lynn Cherry is in this tradition being a book with gorgeous illustrations of rainforest animals and plants with a message about protecting the Amazon.

This one embraces magical realism bringing an outsider face to face with the creatures who rely on the kapok tree for their livelihood. When the lumberjack comes to the Great Kapok tree he is overcome with fatigue and falls asleep at its base. There he is visited by the creatures of the forest.

He is visited by reptiles, insects, birds, cats and finally the natives of the forest. For this lumberjack the experience is enough to convince him to leave the tree standing. Realistically, that's often not the case. Cherry's take home message though is that if enough people learn about the diversity of the forest, maybe it can be saved.