The Hugging Tree: A Story About Resilience

A tree precariously growing on a cliff-side serves as a metaphor for resilience under trying circumstances. “There’s hardly any dirt for me./ No forest breeze, no birds, no bees./ But I will do the best I can/ to make this rock my home,” says the tree, which befriends the rolling sea, birds, moon, and sun as it grows. Wong’s delicate artwork touchingly conveys the tree’s lonesome and perilous circumstances, and after a storm tears away the tree’s roots, a boy brings it soil, enabling it to thrive and suggesting that resilience doesn’t necessarily mean absolute independence. Organized into verselike passages, Neimark’s writing can be haphazard, with rhyme schemes emerging then being abandoned, but the tree’s strength and transformation should have emotional impact for sensitive readers. Ages 4–8. [em](Sept.) [/em]