Suitabook

The Wood Where Stories Sing

Andy Shepherd, illustrated by Ellie Snowdon

Reading: You could pause after the environmental threat emerges to discuss responsibility and differing opinions, then revisit the ending to consider which actions protect the wood and how the community changes.
Themes: Protecting a threatened wood: The children discover marked trees and connect worsening weather, flooding and land damage with threats to the wood and village. Environmental danger is presented through a magical local adventure, with the children trying to communicate its importance to adults.
Friendship and changing viewpoints: Iggy, Cal and Mae work together, while local groups disagree about the wood and the children try to change minds. Friendship is presented positively, and differing views are treated as changeable rather than inevitably divisive.
Mae’s deafness and social belonging: The book addresses mae’s deafness and social belonging; the detail of how it is developed remains unclear. Supportive friendship is set alongside prejudice, while the negative behaviour is not presented as representative of the wider group.
Worth knowing: The story includes marked trees, deforestation, torrential rain, flooding, saturated fields, a possible landslide and a classmate’s negative behaviour towards Mae’s deafness.