Look at the acknowledgements on the reverse of the title page.Why did she write and illustrate the book? Could she have done it without visiting there? What would she know first hand that she might not have gotten otherwise? Who is Lynne Cherry? Read about her on the back end flap.What might each be thinking? The title tree bears some talking about. What's happening here? A man with an ax eyes the great tree with animals looking on. The message is far from subtle, but it is nicely done here and easily understood by even the youngest reader and listener. They fall silent, letting his own senses do the communicating now, and he drops his ax and walks away. Wakening he sees the creatures, including a human child, clustered around him. One by one the animals approach him and whisper reasons for letting the tree live into his ear as he sleeps. Cutting a kapok tree of that size is no easy task and the man soon tires and falls asleep at the base of the tree. Two men approach a huge kapok tree and the larger man commands the smaller one to cut it down and then departs. The green foliage of the equatorial jungle covers the pages and hides some of the creatures who become spokesmen for the forest. This lushly illustrated book is a plea for the rainforests of the earth. The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forestīy Lynne Cherry.
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