Big Tree

Big Tree
Brian Selznick
Scholastic, 2024
525 pages
Grades 4-Up
Fantasy

Caldecott Winning, Seznick, offers another text/illustrated hybrid where the words and pictures work together to tell the story. Louise is a tiny Sycamore seed. Her brother Merwin is her best friend and helps to interpret the world from the safety of their big mother tree. The siblings life is shattered when a huge fire forces them from their mother and out into a big and dangerous world that does not make sense. They must battle many dangers including dinosaurs, volcanoes, and hostile environments, where seeds cannot take root and grow. Merwin finds himself stuck for many years in such an environment, where he at last learns to listen to the voice of the earth just as he struggles for survival. Eventually Merwin and Louise are united again--and this time a huge surprise is in store for him. The story ends with a child in a city who finds a little seedling in a crack in the sidewalk and the cycle starts all over again.

Selznick is amazing! He is uber-talented and his masterpiece Wonderstruck is, in my opinion, one of the best books ever created for middle grade readers. For this reason anything he creates will be published, even if it may not connect to what is considered the target audience. Big Tree is an important story spanning millenium. It has environmental themes and demonstrates the interconnectivity of the natural world. Any book featuring dinosaurs is a draw, so this alone could help to sell the volume. The problem is the story is a bit too esoteric for kids and will go over the heads of many. The illustrations are plentiful, as beautiful as always, and help to tell the story, but are sometimes a bit muddy and loose and I had a hard time understanding what was going on. The good news is, as with Selznick's other titles, the book reads quickly, but the thickness of the volume will put young readers off. It will certainly take some hand-selling and may work best as a one-on-one read aloud. An afterward offers some scientific explanation to the events in the story, as well as the author's journey writing the book, which kids won't care about. This is a gorgeous piece of literature and illustration that will best be enjoyed by fans of the author or artsy adults.