The Grandad Tree
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Cover Story
This issue’s cover is from Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s Monkey Puzzle. Written in rhyme, this agreeable story has butterfly helping little monkey to find his mum. Scheffler’s distinctive, entertaining and strongly characterised illustrations make good use of the page as little monkey meets lots of jungle inhabitants before being reunited with his mum. Thanks to Macmillan Children’s Books for their help in producing this July cover.
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The Grandad Tree
Sharon Wilson
This book deals with the sensitive subject of death, using the seasonal changes that occur in nature - represented here by an apple tree - as a metaphor for the cycle of birth, death and renewal in human life. In the text, Leigh and Vin share the last months of Grandad's long life (which started in the Caribbean) without any clear inkling of his impending demise. Their acceptance of the changes that occur to the apple tree in whose shadow they play (often with Grandad in the background) allow them however to place Grandad's eventual death in a broader natural context. The illustrations, appropriately impressionistic, are an intelligent interpretation to the subtle, economical text.