The Tree of Here

The "official" reviewers at Hornbook and Kirkus who didn't like this book must not have been uprooted as kids. I went to five different grade schools, so I could relate. Yes, the story is slow-paced, and there are some loose ends that never get tied up, but that's the way real life is when your Dad gets transferred and you have to leave everything familiar behind. Life doesn't always move at the speed of a video game. The value of the book is that it acknowledges the sad feelings that kids have about moving. It squarely faces up to the impact of seeing your room disassembled into boxes, the friends who wave goodbye forever, a last visit to the family cemetery, the favorite tree you leave behind... Ah yes, the tree. It's a big dogwood in Jason's front yard, where he likes to climb and listen to secrets whispered to him among the leaves. The tree is firmly rooted in the ground -- it's the tree of HERE, where Jason wishes he could stay forever. The gardener, Mr. Healy (nice reference to "heal") has taught him all about plants and how to care for them, and the tree is worried that Jason is leaving. Who will take care of it now? Jason reassures the tree that the new people will keep Mr. Healy on as their gardener. Then, just before Jason's family pulls away in the car, Mr. Healy gives him a wonderful gift -- a young dogwood tree to plant in the yard of his new home. Which he does. Both Jason and his little tree will put down new roots. (This I can REALLY relate to -- I planted trees in every place we ever lived. Sometimes I wonder if those trees are still there...) All in all, I like this book a lot -- too bad it went out of print. The illustrations have a surrealistic quality in places, moving back and forth between what is going on around Jason, and the thoughts and feelings inside his Jason's head. There's one blooper, though. The story says that "a nest of robins" had lived in a hole in the big dogwood tree. Sorry, Mr. Potok, but robins don't nest in holes! It was a nest of starlings maybe???