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Trees: Haiku from Roots to Leaves
In a unique melding of science and poetry, a collection of haiku extols the wonder of trees—and explores the vital roles they play on our living planet.
perched on a branch,
the crow's nest amid green sails
a place for daydreams
From the giant tree ferns of the forests primeval to the hardy sycamores of today’s urban forests, experience the essence of trees through poems that engage with every season and stage of the life cycle, from seed to photosynthesis. A broad exploration of a majestic subject, this collection of haiku touches on such topics as the importance of trees to other living creatures and the communication of trees with one another through a complex network of roots. Paired with Angela Mckay’s bold, bright, beautifully patterned artwork, Sally M. Walker’s third collection, a companion to Earth Verse and Out of This World, encourages respect and care for our arboreal neighbors. Back matter includes a time line, an author’s note, a glossary, and a select bibliography for curious readers.
perched on a branch,
the crow's nest amid green sails
a place for daydreams
From the giant tree ferns of the forests primeval to the hardy sycamores of today’s urban forests, experience the essence of trees through poems that engage with every season and stage of the life cycle, from seed to photosynthesis. A broad exploration of a majestic subject, this collection of haiku touches on such topics as the importance of trees to other living creatures and the communication of trees with one another through a complex network of roots. Paired with Angela Mckay’s bold, bright, beautifully patterned artwork, Sally M. Walker’s third collection, a companion to Earth Verse and Out of This World, encourages respect and care for our arboreal neighbors. Back matter includes a time line, an author’s note, a glossary, and a select bibliography for curious readers.
48 pages, Hardcover
Published March 14, 2023
48 people want to read
About the author
Sally M. Walker
104 books75 followersSally M. Walker has written science books for children, including Earthquakes, an NSTA/CBC Best Science Trade Book of 1997. She lives in DeKalb, IL.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 23, 2023
Do you know, do you honestly have any idea, how difficult it is to find brand new high-quality children’s poetry in a given year? There’s a reason we praise folks like Shel Silverstein over and over and over again. Simple children’s poems, charming as they may be, are almost excruciatingly difficult to write. Why this is, I cannot say. What I do know is that I have this little poetry radar in my skull, scanning eternally for new works of poetry for kids. Once located, I read through them all and, almost inevitably, feel disappointed. So let me let you in on a little secret about Trees: Haiku from Roots to Leaves by Sally M. Walker and Angela McKay. The first time I read it? I completely dismissed it. I did! I just sort of read the words “haiku” and “trees”, made my own assumptions, and then (surprise surprise) those assumptions were fulfilled. And that would have been the end of the story, except that somehow Trees ended up in my lunchtime reads pile again. This time, I wasn’t as crabby. I sat down and read the book from cover to cover and found myself completely charmed by it. The lesson of the day then is that walking into books for kids assuming they’ll disappoint you isn’t a great way to go about things. And the happy ending for me is that now I’ve come to thoroughly enjoy this book, and what it manages to do with a minimum number of words per page.
Books of haiku for kids always worry me a little. I suspect this may be because I’ve met different people over the years that would argue that a true haiku poem is more than how many syllables appear in each verse. From what I’ve gathered, a haiku is meant to reconnect you, on some level, to the natural world. But if that’s the bar we’re aiming for then Trees surpasses and surmounts it. This is a book that does not but laud the natural world. The focus is clear-eyed and purposeful. It never strays from its core subject matter (trees) even as it uses that subject as a guide through a wide variety of seasons, settings, and even landscapes.
And this isn’t Sally M. Walker’s first published book of poetry. Heck, it’s not even her second. I’d forgotten, but she did this marvelous haiku title Out of this World: Star-Studded Haiku not long before this book, and it was a delightful mix of form and deep space. But usually when I think of her name, the first thing that comes to mind are the nonfiction titles she’s written for older readers over the years. I’m not certain what inspired her to aim a bit younger with her titles, but if they continue to be as good as this and Out of this World then I thoroughly approve. The poetry itself was what captured my attention the second time I read this book, by the way. A poem like “covered with gray fur / pussywillow catkins cling: / kittens on sim twigs,” has a way of quietly impressing.
Trees are having a bit of a moment in children’s books right now. Not that they’ve ever been wholly absent, but this year alone I’ve been delighted to discover books like The Tree and the River by Aaron Becker, Nell Plants a Tree by Anne Wynter, Big Tree by Brian Selznick, The Gentle Genius of Trees by Philip Bunting, and many others. Walker, nonfiction advocate that she is, also packs her poems full of tree facts, as you might expect. What’s interesting is that unlike a lot of books about trees coming out right now, she eschews much discussion of the Wood Wide Web, and the fact that trees communicate with one another with the aid of fungi. Mind you, she doesn’t ignore the fact. One poem reads, “airborne scent signals / roots sharing information … / trees communicate.” But she prefers to highlight more traditional tree facts and uses. A lot of this comes out in fairly rote ways, but on occasion she’ll get ambitious and show the intricate inner workings of how water and sap travel inside the trunk. She writes, “long, thin xylem tubes / zip water from roots to leaves: / tree elevators.” Ambitious, to say the least.
Artist Angela Mckay was an interesting choice for the art of this book. Working in gouache and watercolors, I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to create art, good art that is, set to poetry. On the one hand, the sky’s the limit. You could do anything! On the other hand, limitations have their uses. There is such a thing as too much freedom, after all. But Mckay seemingly understands that for a book of poetry to work as a whole, you need to engage in a kind of connected variety. How does one page turn relate to the next? So it is that for poems about winter and snow, she’ll present us with a shot of two people walking, which we look down on from above. Turn the page and we seem to still be high up (perhaps in a tree) only now it’s summer and we’re watching children climb up to a treehouse, our view parallel with the uppermost rung. Linking these images together by p.o.v. is subtle but ultimately it makes for a more even keeled flow as you read.
How do we see this book being used by kids? I’m no teacher, so I can only guess, but this book does feel like an excellent opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, you could just do a normal hey-everybody-let’s-write-haikus unit. On the other hand, I suspect there’s a bigger opportunity here. What if a teacher taught the kids about haikus and read them a couple titles then took them outside and told them to find some aspect of nature that inspired them to make their own haikus? Then you’ve got that sweet spot of STEM and STEAM going on, right? Or maybe I’m complicating things. For parents that just want to give their kids a bit of beauty on the page, reading Trees: Haiku from Roots to Leaves does just that. Quietly engrossing, it’s an appreciation for both subject and form, all wrapped up together. Hug a tree, or write a poem, or just do both.
Books of haiku for kids always worry me a little. I suspect this may be because I’ve met different people over the years that would argue that a true haiku poem is more than how many syllables appear in each verse. From what I’ve gathered, a haiku is meant to reconnect you, on some level, to the natural world. But if that’s the bar we’re aiming for then Trees surpasses and surmounts it. This is a book that does not but laud the natural world. The focus is clear-eyed and purposeful. It never strays from its core subject matter (trees) even as it uses that subject as a guide through a wide variety of seasons, settings, and even landscapes.
And this isn’t Sally M. Walker’s first published book of poetry. Heck, it’s not even her second. I’d forgotten, but she did this marvelous haiku title Out of this World: Star-Studded Haiku not long before this book, and it was a delightful mix of form and deep space. But usually when I think of her name, the first thing that comes to mind are the nonfiction titles she’s written for older readers over the years. I’m not certain what inspired her to aim a bit younger with her titles, but if they continue to be as good as this and Out of this World then I thoroughly approve. The poetry itself was what captured my attention the second time I read this book, by the way. A poem like “covered with gray fur / pussywillow catkins cling: / kittens on sim twigs,” has a way of quietly impressing.
Trees are having a bit of a moment in children’s books right now. Not that they’ve ever been wholly absent, but this year alone I’ve been delighted to discover books like The Tree and the River by Aaron Becker, Nell Plants a Tree by Anne Wynter, Big Tree by Brian Selznick, The Gentle Genius of Trees by Philip Bunting, and many others. Walker, nonfiction advocate that she is, also packs her poems full of tree facts, as you might expect. What’s interesting is that unlike a lot of books about trees coming out right now, she eschews much discussion of the Wood Wide Web, and the fact that trees communicate with one another with the aid of fungi. Mind you, she doesn’t ignore the fact. One poem reads, “airborne scent signals / roots sharing information … / trees communicate.” But she prefers to highlight more traditional tree facts and uses. A lot of this comes out in fairly rote ways, but on occasion she’ll get ambitious and show the intricate inner workings of how water and sap travel inside the trunk. She writes, “long, thin xylem tubes / zip water from roots to leaves: / tree elevators.” Ambitious, to say the least.
Artist Angela Mckay was an interesting choice for the art of this book. Working in gouache and watercolors, I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to create art, good art that is, set to poetry. On the one hand, the sky’s the limit. You could do anything! On the other hand, limitations have their uses. There is such a thing as too much freedom, after all. But Mckay seemingly understands that for a book of poetry to work as a whole, you need to engage in a kind of connected variety. How does one page turn relate to the next? So it is that for poems about winter and snow, she’ll present us with a shot of two people walking, which we look down on from above. Turn the page and we seem to still be high up (perhaps in a tree) only now it’s summer and we’re watching children climb up to a treehouse, our view parallel with the uppermost rung. Linking these images together by p.o.v. is subtle but ultimately it makes for a more even keeled flow as you read.
How do we see this book being used by kids? I’m no teacher, so I can only guess, but this book does feel like an excellent opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, you could just do a normal hey-everybody-let’s-write-haikus unit. On the other hand, I suspect there’s a bigger opportunity here. What if a teacher taught the kids about haikus and read them a couple titles then took them outside and told them to find some aspect of nature that inspired them to make their own haikus? Then you’ve got that sweet spot of STEM and STEAM going on, right? Or maybe I’m complicating things. For parents that just want to give their kids a bit of beauty on the page, reading Trees: Haiku from Roots to Leaves does just that. Quietly engrossing, it’s an appreciation for both subject and form, all wrapped up together. Hug a tree, or write a poem, or just do both.
November 8, 2025
I enjoyed the haikus, the info-dump at the end felt really lackluster to me, especially with zero supporting illustrations. I didn't think it added to the book, honestly.
April 1, 2023
This collection of haiku is a 3.5 for me. Complemented by splendid illustrations created in gouache and that fill the pages will intense depictions of trees and their various parts, this book makes a good choice for a science lesson on the topic, blending poetry and science. As teachers often do, I'm always on the hunt for children's books that can function in several ways, which makes this one filled with curricular possibilities. It's clear that the author loves her subject matter and has spent quite some time researching trees. The poems discuss the origins of trees as well as seeds and even look inside a tree in insightful fashion and not just on the outside; for instance, xylem is described as "tree elevators" (unpaged), while phloem is tagged as "hidden waterways" (unpaged). The poems are divided into ten sections: "In Times Long Past," "What's in a Name?" "Seeds," "On the Outside," "Peeking Inside," "Treetops," "Leaf Laboratories," "Good Neighbors," "Wild Forests," and "Urban Forests." Each haiku works well in revealing essential elements of the topics, and the abundant back matter expands on each section. So much information is provided in that part of the book that readers may feel a bit overwhelmed, but all of it is interesting and noteworthy. There's even a Glossary. It's hard to imagine anyone reading these poems and the additional information and not coming away with an entirely new perspective on trees. Surely, there will be many science and English language arts teachers who will add this one to their collection.
May 27, 2023
The cover is the best picture. The verse on the back is the best haiku. The author's extensive science notes are the best reasons to pick up the book.
I should have loved this, seeing as it's Candlewick+haiku+trees, but the first few verses were bad, and the rest barely sufficient. Rounded up to 3 stars from 2.5 because it can be used in classrooms and other educational settings as a mentor text as well as a science text. I'm sorry to be rude, but I have to be honest. Reread Joyce Sidman instead.
I should have loved this, seeing as it's Candlewick+haiku+trees, but the first few verses were bad, and the rest barely sufficient. Rounded up to 3 stars from 2.5 because it can be used in classrooms and other educational settings as a mentor text as well as a science text. I'm sorry to be rude, but I have to be honest. Reread Joyce Sidman instead.
April 13, 2024
Lovely illustrations, fun facts about trees and clever haikus combine to make this book a solid choice for a classroom setting. I don't know that I'd read it for fun with a child, but I could definitely see a teacher using it for a crossover activity between science and poetry. Some of the haikus seem forced to fit the science theme, and there is enough back matter to fill its own book, but overall a nice offering from Walker and Mckay.
**Thank you to Candlewick Press for providing this title to SWON Libraries Consortium for professional review.**
**Thank you to Candlewick Press for providing this title to SWON Libraries Consortium for professional review.**
June 7, 2023
Brief summary: This is a collection of haikus about a tree's life cycle and the changes of every season. There are many two-paged illustrations.
The back pages have information about a tree's life, including wild and urban forests. There is also an author's note and a glossary.
Rating: 3.5/5 📗📗📗1/2
The back pages have information about a tree's life, including wild and urban forests. There is also an author's note and a glossary.
Rating: 3.5/5 📗📗📗1/2
April 2, 2024
My first introduction to "sciku" or scientific haiku - a very cute and fun poetic way to introduce science topics to kids. Very beautifully drawn book as well. I even learned a few things as an adult.
Want to read
August 4, 2022Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book from the publisher through Edelweiss.
April 5, 2023
Great combination of science and poetry! Love the illustrations.
August 5, 2023
Great range of poems about all aspects of trees, lovely illustrations, lots of prose information at the end
April 23, 2024
Should maybe give it a four. Enjoyed the haikus and artwork, and a lot of good extra information—even a timeline—but all evolution-based, and I’m a creationist.
June 19, 2024
Several excellent haiku amidst lushly illustrated flora.
All followed, of course, with excellently written science about trees.
All followed, of course, with excellently written science about trees.
August 16, 2025
I liked the pictures!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews