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Format | Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Book | Searching... East Regional Library | E Kar | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... East Regional Library | E Kar | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... South Regional Library | E Kar | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
This inventive picture book relays the events of two hundred years from the unique perspective of a magnificent oak tree, showing how much the world can transform from a single vantage point. From 1775 to the present day, this fascinating framing device lets readers watch as human and animal populations shift and the landscape transitions from country to city. Methods of transportation, communication and energy use progress rapidly while other things hardly seem to change at all.
This engaging, eye-opening window into history is perfect for budding historians and nature enthusiasts alike, and the time-lapse quality of the detail-packed illustrations will draw readers in as they pore over each spread to spot the changes that come with each new era. A fact-filled poster is included to add to the fun.
Author Notes
Children's author and illustrator, G. Brian Karas was born in Milford, Connecticut in 1957. After graduating from Paier School of Art, he worked as a greeting card artist and a commercial illustrator. Home on the Bayou, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, was his first illustrated book. Since then, he has illustrated over seventy books for children. Titles authored and/or illustrated by Karas have won numerous other awards. Saving Sweetness written by Diane Stanley was a Capitol Choices Noteworthy Book for Children in 1996, received a Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon in 1996, and was a School Library Journal Best Book of 1996. Like Butter on Pancakes by Jonathan London was a School Library Journal Best Book of 1995. The Class Artist, written and illustrated by Karas, was a Smithsonian Magazine's Notable Book for Children in 2001 and received the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio 2002 Best Book Gold Award.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 2-This engaging picture book charts the history of an oak tree that's more than 200 years old. Each page lists a year in the life of the tree, starting with an acorn planted by a young boy in 1775. The mighty oak survives decades of droughts and snowstorms until it is eventually felled by a lightning storm, at which point its life cycle continues in the form of "furniture, firewood and mulch." Karas's straightforward narration is informative and reflective. Detailed watercolor illustrations dramatically show the landscape evolving from rural to urban over time, also depicting the introduction of electricity, automobiles, and other new technologies. Amid this rapid change, the oak is steadfast, providing a nesting spot for birds, and beauty and shade for the community. This fascinating time capsule will spark nature and history discussions.-Linda Ludke, London Public Library, Ontario, Canada (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Karas (On Earth) juxtaposes a steadily growing oak tree with the changing landscape around it in this engaging tale of transformation and constancy. It opens with a Native American boy planting an acorn on a forested hill. Subsequent scenes and to-the-point narration reveal how the forest gives way to farmland and a town, which grows into a city. More than 200 years pass and the oak provides a home for animals, swings, and a tree fort. Gouache and pencil illustrations maintain the same perspective throughout, inviting comparisons between elements in each spread and their more modern counterparts that follow (a canoe on the bay is replaced by schooners, steamships, and motorboats). After a poignant penultimate spread (logs are sawed up and driven away after lightning takes the giant tree), the story comes full circle with a sapling. A rapidly modernizing society, the resultant impact on the environment, and the constant, observant presence of nature are themes readers can start to grasp with this book. More simply, it's a charming cycle-of-life story and an engaging chronicle of American urban history. Ages 5-8. Agent: Brenda Bowen, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
The year is 1775; the woodland landscape, bordering a peaceful river, is lush with trees. Deer, squirrels, and a fox share the land with a lone wigwam, and a young Native American boy plants an acorn. A white oak tree sprouts, and for more than two hundred years it stands as a sentinel landmark, growing and witnessing two centuries of transformation in American life. Karas's illustrations show the same location every twenty-five years, unobtrusively keeping track with an expanding timeline at the bottom of each double-page spread. Pencil, gouache, and acrylic illustrations allow readers to see how generations alter the landscape: the development of a port and a town; the rise of business and subsequent changes as, for example, a simple garage becomes a mini-mart; and variations in farming practices as well as the development of differing modes of transportation. There are smaller details for observant viewers to consider, such as the bounty of the oak tree: it offers shade, a place to hang a swing, "a quiet place to sit," and, later, firewood and furniture. In 2000, with great drama depicted in deep purple silhouette, a lightning strike destroys the tree. And the next spring an acorn sprouts, beginning the cycle of nature again while continuing the cycle of history. Appended with facts about oak trees. betty carter (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
From acorn to huge tree, an oak provides the focal point for this clear and simple look at over two centuries of change in a single landscape. A small boy plants an acorn in summer, close to a wigwam, high above a wide river. Though readers will guess that the tall ships that appear in the river by autumn don't belong to the same people whose canoe crosses toward shore in the first pages, Karas avoids editorializing. In the next pages, "The boy grew up and moved away. Farmers now lived here." The perspective stays: the growing tree, the river below, hills rolling away to the horizon. But seasons change, the occupants of the house on the land are different on each spread, and the landscape transforms by human hands through agriculture and construction. Karas' gouache-and-pencil art has a friendly, intimate quality. A timeline grows along the bottom of the page, beginning when the tree sprouts in 1775 and indicating the passage of time at a rate of 25 years per spread. The tree is brought down by a storm in 2000here the narrative changes from past tense to a "you are there" present tense. Young readers may be charmed to realize that the tree sprout near the old oak's stump could by now be a sapling. This will invite repeat visits. (Informational picture book. 4-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
On a hillside overlooking woods and water, an Indian boy plants an acorn, which sprouts in 1775. Fast-forward to 1800: the forests are gone, farmers plow the land, and a house sits beside the sturdy young oak tree. In the distance, a tiny community has sprung up beside the water. Each turn of the page takes readers 25 years forward, with the dates marked on a time line at the bottom of the pages. As the oak grows larger, the people's clothing and technology gradually change, while the nearby town stretches farther into the countryside. In the year 2000, a storm destroys the tree. But beside the stump, an acorn sprouts. Each picture shows the tree from the same vantage point, but the scene shifts continually to reflect varied human activities as well as changing seasons and times of day. While the size of the tree's stump may be exaggerated, the appealing pencil-and-gouache illustrations chronicle the passage of time in a memorable way. Reminiscent of picture books such as Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House (1942) and Lark Carrier's A Tree's Tale (1996).--Phelan, Carolyn Copyright 2014 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
A FEW YEARS AGO, we had a young neighbor who, walking to school, would stop by her favorite trees and ask what kind of morning they were having, maybe chat for a bit. She was a regular second grader and she talked to trees. I don't think she's the only one. Trees have always played a central role in the lives and minds of our species. Researchers tell us that surgical patients heal faster when their windows look out on trees and children do better in school when they can see green spaces. When the famous Treaty Oak in Austin, Tex., was poisoned in 1989, kids made hundreds of cards and placed them under the tree. Not all kids live near historic oaks, but most care about trees, and wonder about them. Books about trees speak to that wondering. In "As an Oak Tree Grows," by G. Brian Karas, we see one tree from its beginning to its maturity and its end. And we see how the river valley around the tree changes, always from the perspective of a treetop, as a tree might "see." A boy plants an acorn in 1775 in a landscape filled with trees. Twenty-five years later (we are told in a timeline at the bottom of the book's pages), many of the trees are gone, and a different kind of house is sitting where the Native American round house had been. Karas writes: "The boy grew up and moved away. Farmers now lived here." No judgments. Events just happened, as the tree stood by. The spare, skillful text also gives us space to notice, in the illustrations, the advent of a bridge, the filling in of houses, the disappearance of barns. One thing that does not change is the presence of children. They sit on tree stumps, sled in snow, mow fawns, pick apples and catch fireflies. The passage of years in the life on the land is wrapped into a circle at the book's end, with the coming of a new oak seedling. Karas lives in the Hudson Valley and dedicated "As an Oak Tree Grows" to Pete Seeger, who was also a longtime resident. It's tempting to think of this lovely book, with its detailed gouache and pencil drawings, as also a homage to the Hudson Valley. Written in free verse stacked tall up and down the page, Tony Johnston's "Sequoia," with illustrations by Wendell Minor, is also a homage, to a remarkable tree that, we learn in an informative author's note at the end, can live to be thousands of years old. In this poem a single sequoia, a "he," is a fellow creature of the earth, one who can watch the sun and the sky; smell the heat, a sudden storm or fire. "He spreads/his ancient/arms/and gathers /flames to him": Fire, we see, is essential to a sequoia's well-being. But perhaps the most arresting act is his listening - to water, to beetles and woodpeckers, "to one bee hum." The notion of this ancient tree, over 200 feet tall (and the two-page spread on which those words appear is oriented so we must turn the book to feel the tree's height), hearing one bee suggests a profound sensitivity - a great witness. Minor's gouache watercolor paintings of the forest, with their glorious, nuanced sunrises, expressive owls and deer, and star-filled skies, create the sensation that we are in the presence of the profound. We see the sequoia forest from ground level, from part way up the trees, from owl's-eye view. This beautiful armchair visit to a sequoia tree may indeed make its readers "look up in wonder at the beauty and majesty of nature," as Johnston writes in the author's note. "SEQUOIA" PRESENTS us with a tree that has human capabilities. In Jerdine Nolen's magical tall tale "Irene's Wish," a human becomes a tree. Irene's Papa has a "magic growing touch." Pointing to the pattern inside a halved apple, he tells her, "If a star can grow inside an apple, anything is possible!" That notion gets us ready for fun; we know everything's going to come out fine because we're told in the first sentence of the story, "Things are back to normal now, but something happened last spring " Irene wishes for more time with her hard-working Papa. Right then he drinks Irene's iced tea, accidentally served in the same glass that holds the seeds for a seed-spitting contest. Sure enough, Papa sprouts branches (an image that may be disturbing to very young children) and soon has to be planted in the yard. The illustrator AG Ford shows us Papa as a tree that is watchful and kindly, and apparently not too disturbed by his treeness. He enjoys when kids play under his branches. Still, I was relieved when Papa woke up on the ground one morning, himself again, even if I wasn't quite sure what had been so powerful about Irene's wish the night before. We see trees as sheltering, beneficent presences in our world. In the best of families we see fathers as sheltering, beneficent presences. This book is an ambitious play on a metaphor, illuminating family life. But it's also a tale about a busy Papa who learns something during his spell as a tree : that he can find a way to "save some time to be with Mama and Jimmy and Baby Thomas... and you, Irene." We have relationships with real trees but perhaps equally important are the trees in our imaginative lives. These authors help us envision what a tree might witness, what an old tree - a forest sentinel - might feel, smell and hear, and what might happen if (oh my!) someone turned into a tree. My young neighbor would have loved these books. JACQUELINE BRIGGS MARTIN has written many books for children, including "Snowflake Bentley," which won a Caldecott Medal. Her latest picture book is "Alice Waters and the Trip to Delicious."