Peter Wohlleben

Achild-friendly version of the popular adult title The Hidden Life of Trees (2016).

There is irony in the idea of revising for children an adult book that boldly challenges the conventional science that keeps humanity strongly detached from the plant kingdom. Indeed, many books for children already deliberately and effectively use terminology of human activities to introduce the vocabulary and rudiments of photosynthesis, and so does this text. The latter word never occurs here, although it states: “Leaves mix water with certain parts of the air to make sugar,” and notes the need for light to produce energy. It goes on to describe tree leaves as having thousands of tiny mouths for breathing and later notes that trees don’t drink in winter because “you can’t drink ice cubes.” Intense anthropomorphism continues throughout, with chapters discussing such topics as tree classrooms, mother trees, and how an “annoyed” birch tree will use the wind to whip its branches against an encroaching tree. Occasionally, readers will notice apparent contradictions, unlikely assumptions, and odd duplication, perhaps a result of the reduction. Nevertheless, the book is full of pertinent information, including the importance of fungi to roots and of trees to one another. The author transmits both wonder and fun, even adding tree-themed activities for children to try with willing adults. A forest’s worth of appealing sidebars, pop-up quizzes with fascinating statistics, and colorful photographs add to a strong subtext: Forest preservation is not just important, but imperative.

A tree-treatise treat. (Nonfiction. 8-12)

-Kirkus Review… (more)

I have mixed feelings about this book. I am not a scientist, a dendrologist or an arborist: but just someone who has become interested in trees over the last couple of years as I explored our local woodlands during Lockdown. So this book's focus on individual trees and their place within their wider locality, whether it's as street furniture, in parkland or in woodland began by fascinating me. How trees grow well or less well in relation to other trees of the same or different varieties nearby: how they are affected by the removal, by whatever means, of trees nearby: their relationship with fungi, insects, other plants. All this is thought provoking, and the early chapters of the book excited my interest a great deal. However, in the end, Wohlleben's continual anthropomorphising of the trees started to concern and irritate me, especially as I felt I lacked the tools for constructive criticism. I'm grateful to this book for exciting my interest, and provoking in me a desire to know much more. But at the same time, I'm taking it with a very large pinch of salt.… (more)

this is so interesting and illuminating. i will forget almost all of it immediately but that doesn't make it any less fascinating.

trees are so much more alive than i realized. they feel. they have memory. they sense time. they experience pain. they take care of their young and their community. they "see" and they communicate and they hurt and they cry and they live so more like we do than i realized.

(i feel totally stymied at how to interact with them now or if it's okay to plant that magnolia tree in my yard like i want to.)… (more)