And one horrible morning, a boy attacks her bark with a screwdriver. Angry men yell out insults as they drive by. But something has changed: Samar’s family is not welcomed by the neighborhood. Bongo gives Samar gifts from her hoard of trinkets. Living in a neighborhood that has seen Italian, Chinese, Spanish and Nigerian families come and go, Red now throws her shade over the home of a Muslim family that includes a shy, gentle 10-year-old girl, Samar, who sneaks into her yard every night to visit Red and is soon accepted by the tree creatures. It’s not as easy as it looks.”) Red, for her part, has a sly wit, aware that a human might be hugging her one minute, and the next, sending her to become tongue depressors. (That book opens winningly with the lines, “Hello. She has created believable nonhuman characters before, most memorably in “The One and Only Ivan,” her Newbery Medal-winning novel narrated by an artistic animal who spends 27 years in captivity in a shopping mall. They chatter with one another, but nature, we learn, has one rule: Do not talk to people.Īpplegate has a quirky imagination and a deft touch. They are “proof that something bad can become something good with enough time and care and hope.” Hers are home to owlets, possums, raccoons and skunks. Bongo, a self-described pessimist with a fine ear for the nuances of human language, resents being grouped in a “murder” of crows, while a bunch of hummingbirds is called a “charm.” She’s full of hollows, at her age, which start as wounds, but slowly heal, offering protection to creatures. She has lots of opinions and a tendency, when her best friend Bongo the Crow is hanging about, to philosophize. On the first of May, her limbs are tied with rags, tags, even “the occasional gym sock,” with wishes scribbled on them. She’s also a “wishtree,” one of an honorable tribe that hosts a centuries-old tradition found all over the world.
Katherine Applegate’s “Wishtree” is a beautifully written, morally bracing story that will leave its imprint on a reader of any age.Ībout that tree: Red is a city tree, a tall, largehearted, middle-aged (at 216 rings) red oak. What’s more, this is a tale told by … a tree.
Leave it to a children’s books writer to produce the most moving commentary I’ve read on the anti-immigration movement - without mentioning bans or walls or presidents.
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