Description Share Post Leave the Trees, Please Benjamin Zephaniah, illustrated by Melissa Castrillón (Magic Cat Publishing) ‘Leave the trees, please,/ Because the trees/ work with the breeze/ to put all living things at ease‘. It might be the tree in Somerset ‘that is one thousand/ and five hundred years old‘. Then again, it seems that every tree could be a tree that we might ‘talk to’ alongside being ‘one that we animals should listen to‘. Might we stop, listen and consider? Benjamin Zephaniah and Melissa Castrillón present a glorious, urgent picture book. We’re reminded, herein, of the way living things need trees’ production of ‘oxygen‘. Thereafter, the way a tree might encourage ‘the birds and the bees‘. Furthermore, doesn’t a tree offer a home for ‘millions of animals‘? However it’s the friendship, nurturing and dense and wealthy habitat that is most brought to mind with this book. It’s not only the persistence of the title’s repetition, but the intricacy of illustration. In this we are reminded of My Heart Was a Tree. Bookwagon is enthralled by Leave the Trees, Please. In fact, we consider that this picture book might offer a mantra, one that is shared and known, repeated and acted upon. After all, don’t we need all the oxygen, friendship and comfort we can have? Thereafter, don’t we need somewhere to talk alongside somewhere to listen, too?
