28 April 2012 THE FAMILY TREE by David McPhail, Henry Holt, March 2012, 32p., ISBN: 978-0-8050-9057-4

"Far past the frozen leaves

The haunted, frightened trees"

--Bob Dylan

"He chopped down trees to make fields for his crops and pastures for his animals. But he left one tree standing. It would provide shade for his house during the long hot summers and act as a buffer against the chilly winter winds."

The squirrel from David McPhail's MOLE MUSIC is back! Or maybe it's that squirrel's great-great-grandfather (or great-great-grandson). Who knows? The nature of squirrels means that you can accumulate quite a few generations of them in a brief number of years.

But that is not so with the nature of trees, at least not in one's human lifetime.

I've just moved back east this week. I've left behind the redwoods of Armstrong Woods (where you can touch and peer up at a tree that was growing back in the days of the real King Arthur) and have now become a new face in the town whose name comes up when you google "Borough of Trees."

That moniker, and the lines of mature trees gracing its avenues, are definitely a big part of what attracts me to this place.

From the apple tree that overhung my swing when I was a munchkin on Long Island, to the Gravenstein apple trees that I raised up from skinny little treelets on my farm in Sebastopol, I've had a life-long love affair with trees. That they are the lungs for our planet is just icing on the proverbial cake.

"The boy protested. He stood between the workers and tree, and would not budge."

THE FAMILY TREE ties in with David McPhail's recent gem NO! as much as it relates to MOLE MUSIC. For just as with the young character in NO!, who demands loudly an end to the never-ending insanity of war and strife, here, you have a young character (with a swing under a tree) demanding an end to the endless paving over of paradise and the related cutting down of our planet's respiratory system.

In THE FAMILY TREE, that process is represented by a tree that was left standing by the boy's ancestor who, long ago, established a farmstead on this land. Now, in wanting to widen the adjacent road, the highway engineers figure to cut down that grand old tree.

And with the magic that makes me love David McPhail, "A call for assistance went out," and a corps of woodland animals large and small arrives. These creatures -- moose, bear, wolf, and raccoon -- take up positions around the boy and his dog, and together they force the highway engineers to plan an alternative route that spares the tree.

Having recently had my eyes opened to the obscenely destructive mining practice of mountaintop removal (in SAME SUN HERE), I am so happy to find a book that brings it down to a personal level, a story that is sure to cause some kid somewhere to say "Wait a minute!" when he or she next hears about or sees a grand old tree about to fall senselessly.

Richie Partington, MLIS
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