The Oak Tree
Julia Donaldson and Victoria Sandøy
Alison Green Books (Scholastic)

One thousand years ago, a little acorn began to grow. Through Julia’s characteristic rhyming narrative and Victoria Sandøy’s illustrations we follow a thousand years of changes through the Norman

and Tudors periods, the Victorian age and the 20th century World Wars, as it grows to become a magnificent oak tree in modern times.

A tree that provides food and shelter for a multitude of birds including jays, owls and woodpeckers; and creatures such as squirrels and bats, a king even, until having become hollowed out, it topples in a storm and becomes a place of play for both children and animals

as well as an abode for hedgehogs and somewhere for ants to deposit their eggs, spiders to spin and beetles to scuttle.

That is not the end though, we come full circle as there on the ground beside the fallen oak is an acorn that is just beginning to grow into a new tree.

A clever amalgam of fact and fiction: I love that Victoria always shows this tree as a location where children play happily: her atmospheric pictures capture beautifully, the changing seasons, even in the snowy scene a warmth emanates from her illustration.

Young children will delight in spotting all the creatures mentioned in Julia’s text as they follow the story.