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Summary
Summary
When Lulu's feeling well, she climbs every tree in sight, especially
the tallest ones,
the ones with the widest branches,
the ones with the stickiest sap.
But when Lulu's sick, she's not allowed outside. She wonders if the trees are lonely without her. Maybe the birds are too.
Without Lulu, nobody climbs the trees but the sun. . . which casts a shadow on Lulu's wall. . . for her to climb.
A Neal Porter Book
Author Notes
Liz Garton Scanlon is the author of many picture books for young readers including All the World , illustrated by Marla Frazee, which was a Caldecott Honor book and a New York Times bestseller. When she's not writing, Liz travels, reads, runs, hikes (preferably with her dog), practices yoga, and spends time with her husband and their two terrific teenage daughters.
Hadley Hooper works as an editorial illustrator for numerous magazines and newspapers. She illustrated The Iridescence of Birds as well as the A Small Thing...But Big . She lives in Denver, Colorado.
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-Daredevils will cheer redheaded Lulu's bravery. Clad in short overalls, she scales only the most challenging trees-those with the stickiest sap, the ones that catch kites, and even trees other kids fall out of. When Lulu is sick and confined to bed, she's missed by the birds and trees, and she woefully watches the sun and moon take over her climbing routes. Lulu's jealousy disappears when she discovers that the enormous shadow on her bedroom wall is of "the tallest, widest, biggest tree of all," which she proceeds to climb, swing from, and hide in...with her imagination. Scanlon celebrates the simple pleasure of nature. Hooper's relief prints use a soft palette and retro line figures, including Lulu's white dog, who always tags along. Details such as Lulu clasping a teddy bear as she climbs and her laurel headband add charm. -VERDICT The serene tone and pace cleverly balance the heroine's restlessness. Introduce this for Earth Day, for Arbor Day, or with themes of imagination. A perfect choice for anyone stuck inside on a glorious day.-Gay Lynn Van Vleck, Henrico County Library, Glen Allen, VA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Lulu climbs trees fearlessly, even "the trees that trap cats and the trees that catch kites and the trees that other kids won't climb." Her skill is almost magical: "When Lulu sees a climbing tree, she's here, and then she's gone, just like that." (She's seen in front of the tree then, in the next instant, high in its branches.) When Lulu gets sick, she has to stay indoors, and she mourns-until she sees the shadow of a tree on her bedroom wall and finds a new way to climb. Hooper (A Small Thing... but Big) fills the pages with rough bark and sprays of lush leaves, suffusing the spreads with the sense of age and awe that old trees offer. She doesn't skimp on color, either, deploying sunlit golds, bay laurel greens, and moonlit blues. Though Scanlon (In the Canyon) spends quite some time on Lulu's disappointment, her lyrical prose celebrates an evergreen childhood activity and envisions a way that imagination can offer comfort when reality is hard to bear. Ages 4-8. Author's agent: Erin Murphy, Erin Murphy Literary. Illustrator's agent: Marlena Torzecka, Marlena Agency. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Lulu likes trees. No, Lulu loves trees. Lulu climbs the tallest trees in the neighborhood with the widest branches and the stickiest sap. Lulus tree-loving joy jumps off the pages through Scanlons warm words and Hoopers simple but luscious illustrations. Deft strokes on muted backgrounds of apricot, beige, pink, and blue bring Lulu to life--here she is with leaves in her hair, hugging her special tree while the tree-dwelling critters check her out; there she is high, high up as her friends crane their necks to get a better view. When Lulu gets chickenpox and is confined to her room, her longing is palpable: she misses the trees, and they miss her. In fact, the whole neighborhood misses her: a tiny puppy looks up in a vain attempt to find Lulu; birds wait expectantly for her; even her polka-dotted boots (which just so happen to match her chickenpox-dotted skin) sit lonely on her bedroom floor. Lulu spends her days of confinement looking out the window, longing for her tree. When she finally turns away from her window, she sees a huge shadow on her wall--the shadow of her favorite tree. Lulu knows just what to do, and she finds a whole new way to climb her tree (hint: it involves imagination). Young tree lovers (and all children are tree lovers!) will want to join Lulu in her passionate, tree-filled life. robin smith (c) Copyright 2017. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A young tree lover finds a way to climb into the leafy branches even when she is sick and confined indoors. In an early double-page spread, Lulu, a small redheaded white girl, can be seen standing in her bare feet on the left-hand page: "When Lulu sees a climbing tree, / she's here" and on the right-hand page, peering out from the leafy branches of a tree: "and then she's gone, just like that." Lulu scrambles up even the tallest treesshe rescues cats and kites, and sometimes she lies along a branch like Philippe Petit on a high wire, leaves in her hair. Hooper's digitally rendered bold lines and warm colors celebrate Lulu's trees: strong twisted trunks, straight trunks, evergreen boughs, broad leaves. Big and little children, mostly white though there are a few children of color, gather under the trees. The houses are spaced generously apart and a Royal typewriter and a camera sit on Lulu's bookcase, giving the setting a timeless feel. Lulu's sadness indoors is conveyed through her separation from the tree by her window, and only the sun and later the moon climb the branches. But the foliage shadow on Lulu's wall is invitingly dense, broad-branched, and full of golden lightenticing for a girl whose imagination is as nimble as she is. Engaging for climbers and dreamers alike. (Picture book. 3-7) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Lulu's specialty is climbing trees: the tallest, widest ones; those with big knots and sticky sap; the ones that trap cats and catch kites; and the kind that other kids won't even attempt. When Lulu gets sick and must stay indoors, nothing is quite right. The trees miss her, the birds stop singing, and only the sun and the moon are able to climb the branches. But when Lulu turns her back to the window, she discovers the tree's shadow projected on her bedroom wall, just waiting to be climbed. The author of All the World (2009) here solves an unusual problem with an imaginative solution. Hooper's colorful artwork complements Scanlon's lilting prose. The trees in Lulu's neighborhood take center stage, displaying gnarly trunks, distinctively shaped leaves, and multiple hues of green, often set against pink or yellow backgrounds for maximum contrast. This makes a good choice for Arbor or Earth Day story hours, especially when paired with an informational title such as Durga Yael Bernhard's Just like Me, Climbing a Tree (2015).--Weisman, Kay Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
most picture books could just as well be shelved under self-help. If so many books for children tend toward the didactic (well, maybe not the ones about beasts consuming tacos), that may be because you're never too young to have problems. But if you're lucky, you'll have an adult who reads to you, an adult who knows that answers to all manner of problems can be found in books. The young protagonist of Shinsuke Yoshitake's "Still Stuck" isn't named and is indeed barely seen, his (though it could just as well be her) little face obscured by the T-shirt in which he finds himself trapped while undressing for a bath. It's a reiatable predicament, and his response is instructive: He learns to cope. Life won't be so bad inside his cotton confines; he can drink from a straw, and learn how to keep the cat from tickling his tummy. The story's moral is elusive - keep a stiff upper lip, look on the bright side or just hope mom will arrive, deus ex machina, to help you. Yoshitake's illustrations are so charming they obviate the need for an obvious lesson - my kids laughed throughout, though never harder than at the poor hero's bare bottom as mom bathes him. Each child is unique, but all children think butts are hilarious. As problems go, getting stuck in a shirt isn't so terrible. But childhood (adulthood, too, but don't tell the kids that) does involve a reckoning with fear. Dan Santat, whose "The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend" won a Caldecott Medal, makes fear the subject of "After the Fall (How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again)." So does the stupefyingly prolific Mo Willems, in "Sam, the Most ScaredyCat Kid in the Whole World," a sequel to his "Leonardo, the Terrible Monster." Willems plays it for laughs and does it well; any child familiar with the author-illustrator's oeuvre - and few, it seems, haven't yet met his Pigeon, Knuffle Bunny, Gerald the elephant and his pal, a pig named Piggie - would expect no less. Sam, the titular character, is afraid of everything (spiders, a jack in the box, the daily paper) though not his friend Leonardo, who as a bona fide monster might be expected to instill fear. Boy and monster meet girl and monster - Kerry and her pal Frankenthaler. The monsters leave it up to the kids to stop screaming and figure out how not to be afraid of one another. They find a way. You'll forgive me for reading into it something deeper: Sam, a boy with pinkish skin, Kerry, a bespectacled brown girl, not just making peace but joining forces.I'm with Sam in that I fear most of these days' news cycles; what a pleasure to be reminded that people working together can vanquish fear. Willems works in a cartoony vernacular, while Santat's aesthetic is darker, near realist, so his Humpty Dumpty is an uncanny fellow, clearly an egg but one decked out in jeans and a skinny tie. The book's illustrations are suffused with fear - scary, in fact. Humpty is quite alone on most of the pages; the urban landscape in which he dwells is one of shadows, plus that looming wall from which he famously tumbles. As the subtitle promises, the story begins postfall, Humpty so afraid now of heights he can't sleep in his loft bed. I was so genuinely surprised by the book's conclusion that I won't spoil it. It's always gratifying to see how an artist can turn even the most familiar tale into something new. The heroines of Barbara McClintock's "The Five Forms" and Liz Garton Scanlon's "Another Way to Climb a Tree" are both adventurers, but even daring souls have their troubles. Scanlon's Lulu - drawn by Hadley Hooper in a beautiful throwback style - has never met a tree she didn't want to climb. So what to do when confined to her room on a sick day? McClintock's unnamed protagonist is similarly game for anything, certain she can master the forms of traditional Chinese martial arts. She ends up in over her head, her body's contortions conjuring an actual crane, leopard, snake and dragon who wreak havoc in her house. "Another Way to Climb a Tree" contains the ineffable thing that makes the picture book so special a form. Over repeat visits, the reader - of any age - will find and savor new details in Hooper's pictures. And the way that Lulu solves her problem and climbs a tree, illness or not, is quite magical. If story is less of interest in "The Five Forms," it hardly matters; There is something irresistible about McClintock's painterly illustrations, which are a departure from the beautiful realist style of her previous books (like last year's "Emma and Julia Love Ballet," an all-time favorite in my family). The new story has a comic strip's construction, and a young reader will naturally find joy in the utter destruction the forms of the title release, as well as in how sensibly the story's heroine deals with that mess. One problem all kids, and people who are no longer kids, can understand is the vicissitude of mood - the way human happiness is fleeting, sadness inevitable. It takes a special writer to grapple with this and still come up with an interesting book, and Lemony Snicket is a special writer. He writes with clarity as well as complexity, and can bounce from silly to serious quickly and easily. Snicket's wit is never at the expense of adult or child, and somehow accessible to both. Yes, Snicket has his shtick: ponderous character names, an air of the old-fashioned, unlikely plot twists. But these are deployed to winning effect in "The Bad Mood and the Stick," which is about a bad mood that is stuck to a girl named Curly, who picks up a stick that falls from a tree. The illustrator, Matthew Forsythe, isn't reinventing the wheel by depicting the bad mood as a cloud, but of course, that particular wheel is perfect as it is; it's remarkable, really, how with only a squiggly outline and a wash of color the artist creates so vivid an antihero. Self-help books (all sorts of books, come to think of it) can almost all be distilled down to one takeaway, a few words of wisdom. To explain the inexplicable (the fickleness of mood) Snicket tells us "You never know what is going to happen." This turn of phrase transcends being a simple moral - the closing coda of his odd story - to become something more like a mantra. Some of us are struggling with getting dressed, some yearning to climb a tree, some stuck with a bad mood, and the truest thing for all of us is that no matter what, we can't know what's coming. We've all got prob- are. If adults lems, no matter how old we can't step in and solve all of a child's troubles, we can at least give them that particular reassurance. You never know what's going to happen; life's joy is in seeing what comes next. RUMAAN alam is the author of "Rich and Pretty." His second novel, "That Kind of Mother," will be published next year.