Nell Plants a Tree
by Anne Wynter; illus. by Daniel Miyares
Preschool, Primary    Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins    40 pp.
1/23    9780062865779    $17.99

Wynter (Everybody in the Red Brick Building, rev. 11/21) presents a loving brown-skinned family through the generations in a story that explores, by providing glimpses into the past, how long it takes a tree to grow. In the opening spreads, we see children in the present day figuring out “how high they can climb” in the branches of a tall tree. But before that can happen, a girl (in the past) named Nell must pick up a seed, tend it, and bury its sprout. The children can only play in the tree’s cool shade because Nell watered the soil; and so on. Miyares establishes two visual timelines: present-day with elderly Nell and one that is generations past with Nell as a girl. Viewers see the ways in which the characters in the present reap the rewards of a splendid pecan tree (e.g., Nell baking a pecan pie with her grandchildren) and regularly pause to look backward to see young Nell attentively nurturing the tree. Palette choices aid readers with the timeline and the cast of characters: the old and young versions of Nell wear a mustard-colored dress. Wynter’s text sings with the economy and elegance of a poem, and specificities delight (“a leaf flecked with holes”). Miyares’s (Night Walk to the Sea, rev. 9/21) illustrations, which capture light especially well, reflect the wonder of family, friends, the outdoors—and the magnificence of a tree that began when “Nell picks up a seed.”

From the January/February 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.