LeVar explores the magnificent life cycle of trees in the forest and their importance to humans, animals, and the planet, and he explores how photosynthesis works. He also visits a scientist who climbs trees to study them more closely, and a family who harvests maple syrup.

Review books

Feature Book:

Once There Was a Tree

This book beautifully weaves together the important relationships among all living things, and focuses primarily on our dependence on trees to provide food, shelter, and the air we breathe.

Author: Natalia Romanova
Illustrator: Gennady Spirin
Publisher: Penguin

The Tremendous Tree Book

Cut-paper illustrations and simple rhyme celebrate the marvels of trees. Basic facts about what trees are, how they grow, and how they benefit humans and animals are shared.

Author: Barbara Brenner and May Garelick
Publisher: Boyds Mills Press

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf

A child describes the growth of a sugar maple tree from seed to sapling, and the planting of a tree in the family's yard.

Author: Lois Ehlert
Illustrator: Lois Ehlert
Publisher: Harcourt Brace

The Tree in the Wood

A classic folk song, thought to be from France, is adapted into a circular rhyme with intertwining themes of growth and change and of the interrelationships between everything in the natural world.

Author: Christopher Manson
Illustrator: Christopher Manson
Publisher: North-South Books