Three children’s books on refuge trees

> Hope for tomorrow

These days, the future cannot be said to be very reliable. The present, even less. From a pandemic to a war, from a climate catastrophe to closed schools, children are confronted early on with their powerlessness – and even worse, that of their parents. This book is a concentrated dose of poetic sweetness in the face of uncertainty. Nathalie Dion’s drawings bring a little girl to life at home, playing with her shadow, then outside in the snow. Everything is so unstable in his little life – the whimsical shadow sometimes disappears, the stories are populated by wolves, the pretty snowflakes become icy and sharp… But the cherry tree buds in the fall. Not because it knows it will bloom in the spring, but because it hopes so.

> The Lives of the Oak

The narrator of this beautifully illustrated black and white album is an oak tree, which lived on its plain for 457 years. On him, around him, and even sometimes in him, millions of lives have flourished – who can say the same? On each page, a sentence written in red and a splendid image evoke one of these passengers who came to find refuge. Squirrels, eagles, humans, insects rubbed shoulders there, found each other, loved, killed. Until one day, this exceptional guest suffered “the bite of iron”, that of the chainsaw. A second life awaits, to be discovered with the children.

> The ideal hiding place

The three children who embark on a game of hide and seek in this album are very lucky: the author and illustrator has created an extraordinary landscape for them, which is full of colorful shrubs and leafy groves. A welcoming and free nature, full of ideal hideouts. A few sentences in the infinitive, on each page, are enough to guide the reading: “breaking the rules”, “spotting prey”, ” to hide youself “… The rest is just a childhood dream, until the height of happiness: settling at the top of a tree, on a branch, contemplating the view and believing yourself invincible.