Eco Girl

3.8

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Author(s)

Ken Wilson-Max

Publisher

Candlewick Press

Genre(s)

Age Range

Release Date

March 07, 2023

ISBN

978-1536228090

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In a tender celebration of family tradition, a little girl becomes an environmental steward to express her love for all things leafy and green.

Eve loves living next to a forest because it means being close to her favorite baobab trees. Doing her best to imitate them, Eve practices patience. She feeds and shelters birds, just as her beloved trees do, stretching toward the sky as if her arms were branches. Eve longs to communicate with the leafy giants she admires, and while she can’t become a tree, she can contribute to the beauty of the forest—just like her dad and grandma before her—by nurturing her very own baobab seedling. Thoughtful text, intimate illustrations, and abundant back matter gently introduce the concept of land stewardship and the joys of giving back. Ken Wilson-Max’s picture book companion to Astro Girl celebrates reciprocity while honoring our connection to our own branching family trees.

Editor review

1 review

Growing Baobab Trees

June 07, 2023

Overall rating

3.8

Plot

4.0

Characters

4.0

Writing Style

4.0

Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)

3.0

Eve loves living near the forest and is conscientious about looking out for the trees growing all around her. She is especially interested in the baobab tree, and ponders what trees would say if they talked to each other. Her parents encourage her to embrace the traits of the trees like patience and caring for others. When she visits her grandmother for her birthday, her grandmother gives her a baobab seedling for her to take care of, and explains the link that the tree has to similar trees planted by her grandmother and her father. Two pages at the end of the book explain more about baobab trees and ecology.

Good Points

It's never too early to get children invested in ecology, so this is a great book to have on your shelves along with Hawthorne's Hidden Habitats: Earth, Lindstrom's We Are Water Protectors, and Brown's The Curious Garden. A perfect nonfiction accompaniment to this title is She Persisted: Wangari Maathai by Eucabeth Odhiambo, since this environmental activist is mentioned in the notes.

The impressionist pictures are full of the greens and browns of the forest, and give the feeling of being in the shade in a delightful way. It's good to see a multigenerational aspect to the subject of trees, and Eco Girls family is supportive of her interested in trees. This would be a great choice for a read aloud on Earth Day or Arbor Day, and the author's Zimbabwean background takes us beyond just maple and oak trees!