Pistes d'exploration

Discuss how trees are depicted in the book. Note the different seasons.

Talk about the comparisons that are made. Make a chart with new comparisons.

Observe a tree and write about all the things you notice. Try to make some comparisons as in the book.

Look at the inside cover of the book and the pictures. Talk about the different seasons.

Discuss the comparisons in the book.

Draw and write what you see when you picture something in nature (e.g. a flower, a cloud, a lake). Share with the class.

Research names of trees you can find in the schoolyard or near your house. Make an anchor chart of trees for the class to help you remember their names.

Just a Dream, Old Elm Speaks: Tree Poems, TheGiving Tree, TheGreat Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest, If You Hold a Seed

Mots-clés

Picture book , creativity , environment , illustrations (plasticine) , metaphors , point of view , seasons , trees

Commentaire descriptif

What do you see when you look at a tree? This simple question is behind every illustration in this imaginative book of shapes, colours and textures created with brightly coloured modelling clay. Each vibrant 3-D illustration invites readers to make comparisons between the shape of a tree and something else in our world. The lyrical text explains that a tree can be a pirate ship or a parasol or a friend; it can be a white, bony-limbed skeleton. It all depends on how you look at it. In one comically surreal scene, a tree is called “a game of dress-up” and shows four people at a bus stop, each with a crazy hairstyle that mimics the tree behind them. Suitable for a wide range of students in multiple disciplines, the book can also serve a beginning ESL classroom due to its sparse text and emphasis on illustration. In addition to jumpstarting the imagination and creativity of children, the book might be used to ignite a conversation about nature and the seasons, or to explain the idea of metaphor in a poetry unit.