Review Detail

Eco Girl

Kids Fiction 367

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!