The Happiness Tree: Celebrating the Gifts of Trees We Treasure
Grade 1–4—Much surface and little substance mark this collaboration from Gosline and Bossi—but oh, what a beautiful surface it is. As the rhyming text extols the virtues of trees and describes the planting and growth of a group of seeds, the jewel-toned illustrations of the natural world immediately draw the eye. The elevated language tends more to poetry than sense: "Warm wishes sowed the greening land/and flocking birds rejoiced the stand/and sang a story that uplifts,/the tale of ten trees' simple gifts." The text then introduces these trees, each chosen to represent a particular characteristic (seemingly at random, for the afterword describing the various species gives no hint as to why they were assigned their titles). The blue spruce represents tolerance, the yellow poplar stands for love, and so on. A listing of state trees is appended. With a slightly New Agey premise, this handsomely illustrated book is more inspirational than educational and may find a home in Arbor Day celebrations and in Sunday school classrooms.—Kathleen Kelly MacMillan, Carroll County Public Library, MDCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.