SuitabookBig Tree
Brian Selznick
- Reading
- Read it in manageable sections, pausing after major dangers or science passages. Let the child choose whether to discuss the mother’s death immediately, and revisit illustrations as evidence of mood, setting and change.
- Themes
- Sibling loyalty under pressure: Louise and Merwin remain devoted to each other while travelling through danger and uncertainty, helping one another and learning from mistakes. The book presents this favourably.
- Interdependence and care for life: The book connects the seeds’ survival with relationships among plants, animals and other beings, and presents protecting life as important. Interdependence and environmental responsibility are treated as central values, though the story also includes danger and loss within nature.
- Science within imaginative storytelling: The story includes accounts of the Big Bang, the Moon’s possible origin, life on Earth, trees, environments and extinction alongside talking natural elements and imagined adventures. Scientific ideas are woven into a fictional narrative, with at least some explanations identified as theories rather than settled fact.
- Worth knowing
- Prepare for intense material: a mother tree dies, characters encounter captivity and predation, and the wider story includes fire, volcanoes, an asteroid, mass death and extinction. The emotional effect may be considerable for a sensitive reader.