Review Detail

THE GENTLE GENIUS OF TREES is a cute, educational picture book about lessons from trees. The book explains some of the cool facts about trees, such as how they make glucose from photosynthesis and the networks they use to help each other and pass messages back and forth. These turn into lessons about how to grow strong and help other people as well. The book also includes some tree jokes to keep children laughing as well.

What I loved: This is an engaging way to teach the basics about trees and the things we can learn from our strong neighbors. The book uses a conversational tone that makes it quite approachable for young readers. The illustrations capture each topic well with anthropomorphized trees and parts of trees/molecules along the way. This makes for a book that will pull young readers in, while teaching them about trees as well as some good life lessons.

The font is clear and printed large enough to be easy to read. The early pages are a bit lengthy, which will make this work for older picture book readers, such as elementary school aged children and young middle grade readers. The tone and jokes make this an entertaining book, even for readers that don't typically go for non-fiction/educational stories.

Final verdict: THE GENTLE GENIUS OF TREES is an educational and entertaining picture book about the awesomeness of trees and the things they have to teach us.