The Curvy Tree

September 15, 2015
A child with ostracism issues finds a timber tutor in this illustrated spinoff from the Land of Stories series. Waking from his afternoon nap to find a lass weeping on an adjacent stump, the Curvy Tree enquires as to the cause of her distress. She whinges: "I'm never going to find a friend," because the village's mean other children "say that I talk funny, I'm not pretty, and I'm not smart." In response, the tree informs her that his twisted limbs saved him from loggers years ago, and then he lifts her up to see more curvy trees all around, each with a child in its branches. You'll find friends aplenty, he assures her, when you grow up and leave town-or, as he puts it, "look past the horizon." The narrative is not only trite, but contradictory, as the child sees the tree on one page and on the next "didn't even notice it." Dorman endows the golden-brown Curvy Tree with kindly features, dominated by a ski-shaped nose, that slide freely up and down the trunk. Though an evergreen in the Land of Stories novels, here it looks much more like a hazel, with sparse foliage and corkscrew boughs. The child displays no such signs of physical unattractiveness; on the contrary, her cute, gigantic spectacles and woolly blonde mane make the "not pretty" business sound more like peer envy than teasing. Pure corn syrup. (Picture book. 6-8)

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February 1, 2016

PreS-Gr 2-A girl runs away to the forest and eventually collapses in tears at the foot of a curvy tree. The tree asks the girl why she is crying, and she tells him that the other children in her village are mean to her despite her kindness. They mock her appearance, glasses, speech, and intelligence. In an effort to cheer her up, the tree tells her his own history. Once the other trees teased him for being different, but when loggers came to the forest, they cut down all of the other trees. Being different saved the curvy tree. He was lonely but eventually grew tall enough that he could see other curvy trees in distant forests. From his branches, the girl sees the other trees, and in each one there is a child like her. The tree teaches her that life will improve as she grows and looks outward. The digital artwork is romanticized, befitting the story's tone, but the message is a bit over-the-top and saccharine. VERDICT The well-intentioned story is held back by awkward phrasing and cloying illustrations.-Laura Hunter, Mount Laurel Library, NJ

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