My Towering Tree

by Janna Matthies, Ashley Wolff (Illustrator)

Overview

Discover all the joyful moments and adventures waiting right outside your door in this mindful rhyming picture book celebration of backyard nature.

In my yard’s a towering tree. It reaches high to cover me. I lie beneath the towering tree and think my thoughts, and breathe, and be.

There is much to do and so much to see beneath the branches of a towering tree! Step inside a leafy backyard world where squirrels are zipping, bees are buzzing, the sun is shining, and a curious, creative child is noticing and absorbing it all. This tribute to the wonderful worlds that exist in a backyard invites readers to stop, take a breath, and appreciate the natural world around them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781665911931
Publisher:	Beach Lane Books
Publication date:	08/27/2024
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	10.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Janna Matthies is a picture book author and early elementary music teacher in Indianapolis. Her books include Here We Come!; God’s Always Loving You; Two Is Enough, which made the 2016 Bank Street list and New York Times Book Review; The Goodbye Cancer Garden; Peter, the Knight with Asthma; and Monster Trucks. Janna is a longtime volunteer with the Indiana SCBWI and provides editorial services to the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra for picture books supporting their Teddy Bear Concert Series. When she’s not writing or making music, Janna can be found digging in the garden, swimming laps, walking Juneau the howling Husky, or keeping up with her husband and three mostly-grown kids.

Ashley Wolff lives in Vermont and is the author and illustrator of more than sixty books for children, including the modern classic Miss Bindergarten series by Joseph Slate, and her own celebrated Only the Cat Saw; Where, Oh Where, Is Baby Bear?; Baby Bear Counts One; and Baby Bear Sees Blue. Visit her at AshleyWolff.com.

Editorial Reviews

This book is sure to delight . . . beautifully written rhymes blend perfectly; the pacing is ideal for reading aloud. A strong addition to the shelves and an accessible title to add to nature lessons or even story hours about mindfulness, with its emphasis on simplicity and an appreciation of nature.

6/14/24 - School Library Journal

2024-05-04
A child delivers a paean to the natural world as experienced in a backyard.

Reminiscent of “The House That Jack Built,” this cumulative tale begins with the titular tree, then adds a climbing squirrel, followed by the tomatoes that both the squirrel and child nibble on. After several more spreads (each of which ends with the phrase “the towering tree / that reaches high / to cover me”), the text expands, with the child now focused on the sun, which casts its warmth and light over “all that I can see,” including the previously mentioned backyard features. Wolff’s lush illustrations bring a radiance to every spread, even before the text turns its attention to sunshine, and the rhyming text flows pleasantly. Young readers will enjoy picking out the bee that buzzes through every spread but the last, trailing a fuchsia plume that matches the jacket of the freckled, light-brown-skinned child. Readers can also follow the progress of a pair of robins who build a nest at the beginning of the book and, by story’s end, have three hungry chicks. The final spread flips the book for a vertical view of the massive tree, revealing even more bird life in the higher branches, suggesting further territory for the book’s child, or readers, to observe.

A gentle appreciation of the nature around us, from the ground to the sky. (Picture book. 3-8)

Kirkus Reviews