> For raised lamination
It’s not easy to offer a pop-up book devoted to trees, a woody plant whose particularity is to stand erect. Except to assume a certain verticality in terms of reading, as with this small catalog that we will leaf through from bottom to top like a notebook. Ten “essential” trees from here and elsewhere – from oak to apple tree, from olive tree to baobab – make up a relief work with soft digital contrasts and simple texts not without anecdotes. Did you know that cricket bats are made from the wood of the weeping willow? Or that ginkgo biloba – also known as the “40 crown tree” – appeared on Earth 270 million years ago, even before the dinosaurs? As Christmas approaches, young readers will learn that spruce is the real name of the tree at the foot of which presents are gathered.
“The Trees”, by Arnaud Roi, illustrations by Boris Zaïon, Milan, 24 p., € 13.90. From 6 years old.
> To take root
In the skin, or rather the bark, of a tree. This is the watchword of this album in imperative mode, calling the reader to imagine himself with a trunk, branches and foliage. “Be a tree! Keep your head up high, stretch your branches up to the sun. Let your roots roll up, twist in the ground to better anchor yourself there ”, chants a prose not devoid of poetry. A certain erudition also emerges to remind us that the trees of the same forest take care of each other and that they exchange information thanks to their intertwined roots and their networks of fungi (the mycorrhizal network). Inspired by The Secret Life of Trees (Les Arènes, 2017), by the German forest engineer Peter Wohlleben, this chlorophyll ode will introduce the youngest to the virtues of ecology.
“Be a tree! », By Maria Gianferrari, illustrations by Felicita Sala, translated from English (United States) by Luba Markovskaia, La Pastèque, 40 p., € 17. From 6 years old.
> To see through the branches
An air by Brassens comes to mind when reading this little album. Near their tree, at the top of the hill, all live in harmony: fox, hedgehog, birds, and even a little boy, who has built a cabin there. In its wide branches and its flared port, the plant welcomes all the happiness in the world. Until a terrible storm, which breaks it. If the refuge is lost forever, it is something else that humans will succeed in creating from this loss, a new harmony with the animals. As simple in the subject as in the choice of colors: orange, green, blue and white, for an elegant play of contrasts.
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