Have You Seen Trees? by Joanne Oppenheim

Have You Seen Trees? by Joanne Oppenheim, illustrated by Jean and Mou-Sien Tseng

Rating: 5 beautiful stars

This is a must-read book for any teacher or parent.  I know that the picture on the left is unusually and perhaps obnoxiously large, but a) I couldn't find the right book on my Amazon.com link-thingy on Blogspot and b) the poem is beautiful but the pictures are even more beautiful.  So just breathe in the beautiful spring blossoms on that tree and enjoy...and be annoyed with me that I couldn't find more images for you to check out.  I might have to break out the camera to add some images myself.

The watercolors in this book are breathtaking, truly frame-worthy.  They even make chatterbox Lorelei quiet--especially the page with the weeping willow (her favorite tree since she read Dandelion), where the bright green weeping willow covers 80% of the two huge pages. 

And the text, save for the slightly un-enticing title, is great, too.  There are rhymes within the lines--I'm sure that my English teachers would be sad I didn't remember the word for this--that make this one of the best read-aloud books I've ever read.  Joanne Oppenheim describes different trees in different seasons, starting each season with a question: "Have you seen Winter trees?" or "Have you seen Spring trees?"  She thus provides the opportunity for chatting on about which season we're in now, and what sorts of things we see in our trees.  On the winter page, Lorelei always makes me tell her about the snowstorm she probably doesn't remember but did, in fact, live through--when our very own trees somehow balanced a foot of snow on their branches; some were successful, others not.

And the best part is, both Lorelei and Ben love it.  Whenever I read the title to them, they look out of our big windows and Lorelei says, "Yes!" and Ben points and says, "EH!"  (That's Ben-speak for "yes!")  Ben especially chooses it again and again and again.  He'd probably sleep with it if I let him, but we try and keep library books downstairs, especially one this fragile.

I think the best part of this book is that it's nonfiction and doesn't "just" tell a story.  It teaches kids about the importance of trees, and to appreciate the variations among the trees and between the seasons.  We've read a few books about trees lately, and they all helped Lorelei answer well my question today: "What do trees give us?"  She said that they gave us fruit like apples and mangoes and shade from the sun and wood for clubhouses and a home for birds.  I was really proud of her.  And I realized that all these books that I sometimes feel like I'm shoving in her face actually impact her in more ways that I realize.  She's listening, and I'm so thankful that I have a book like this to share with her during these sponge-like early years.

This is a great, great book.  It seems like it's available through multiple sellers, but also through your local library.  I found it through Childsake, an organization dedicated to nature and the environment.  They have a hefty list of children's environmental books.  Check it out, especially if you have older kids.  It's a great resource.