4 December 2013 THE TREE LADY: THE TRUE STORY OF HOW ONE TREE-LOVING WOMAN CHANGED A CITY FOREVER by H. Joseph Hopkins and Jill McElmurry, ill., Beach Lane/Simon and Schuster, September 2013, 32p., ISBN: 978-1-4424-1402-0 

"She loved the way they reached toward the sky and how their branches stretched wide to catch the light.  Trees seemed to Kate like giant umbrellas that sheltered her and the animals, birds, and plants that lived in the forest.

"Not everyone feels at home in the woods.

"But Kate did.

"When Kate grew up, she left home to study science in college.  She looked at soil and insects through a microscope.  She learned how plants made food and how they drank water.  And she studied trees from around the world.

"No woman had ever graduated from the University of California with a degree in science.

"But in 1881, Kate did."

Kate Sessions is known as the mother of San Diego's 1,200 acre Balboa Park.  Almost every big, old tree in that park and around the city is one that she grew and planted.  Thanks to all the trees and plants she planted in Balboa, she was the unsung hero of San Diego's successful Panama-California Exposition in the park a century ago. 

I've been down in San Diego a couple of times for American Library Association conventions.  Yet I didn't have a clue that it once was a desert town.  And that's the legacy of tree-lover Kate Sessions, who grew up in northern California, ended up in San Diego as a teacher, but then left teaching to become a gardener.  It was at this point that she "wrote letters to gardeners all over the world and asked them to send her seeds that could grow in a desert."  The results are history.

To me, this inspirational picture book for older readers has so many things going for it.  I love true stories about women from the past who have accomplished big things.  The old Boy Scout in me loves that the big thing Kate Sessions accomplished was to plant a crazy number of trees, turning a desert city into a lush one.  I really love the illustrations here, which are very reminiscent of Barbara Cooney's folk style.  And I love that, as I learned in the Author's Note, Kate Sessions also wrote newspaper and magazine articles sharing her extensive horticultural expertise (and no doubt her love of trees) with the public.   

A scientist, tree lover, and writer?  This tree lady rocked! 

Richie Partington, MLIS
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