Tree of Wonder
Kate Messner and Simona Mulazzani
Chronicle Books
I loved the author’s Up in the Garden, Down in the Dirt. Now for her latest narrative information book she takes readers to a more exotic habitat, the tropical rainforest  and in particular one Almendro tree.
This tree, which we are told, is able to produce over a 1,000,000 flowers when it blooms, is in fact the centre of an ecosystem of its own with over 1,000 different living things depending on it.  Among those creatures that rely upon it for shelter and/or food are brightly coloured birds – Great Green Macaws and Keel-Billed Toucans,

both of which feast on the ripe fruits, and Howler Monkeys (they help disperse the seeds of the fruits. Then there are the nocturnal fruit bats that also help in seed dispersal as do the Agoutis, which snuffle around the tree’s base gorging on the fallen fruits. The Blue Morpho butterflies sip the juice of the rotting fruits, roosting in groups to deter predators. For further protection, they flash their brightly coloured wings …

then fold them up with the brown undersides against the trunk, the spots thereon giving their wing undersides a hawk- or owl-like resemblance.
Among the residents of the Almendro are tadpoles of Poison Dart frogs carried by their parents for safety into the tree where there are small pools of water; and spiders, and leafcutter ants.
Maths is also embedded within this fascinating book. The number doubles as the page is turned and a new species is featured: thus we are shown for instance 4 toucans, 8 Howler Monkeys,

16 Fruit Bats and so on until we reach 1,024 – that’s the number of Leafcutter ants symbolically represented. And if readers want more maths, then there are, at the end, ten problems, some more challenging than others, just waiting to be solved.
Simona Mulazzani’s detailed scenes of the rainforest fauna and flora are beautiful. Every turn of the page offers a new and glorious painting to linger over.
Engagingly written and superbly illustrated, this book has much to offer primary schools using a topic-based approach to the curriculum. (I came upon several classes using the tropical rainforest as part of their investigative studies recently.)

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