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No Comments It’s Been a Busy Week
The kids didn’t have school on Monday, for starters, and while there was still piano and flag football practice and a school dance thing for my 14-year-old, it was also a day at home that saw me deciding to tackle all the spring/summer bins of girl clothes at once. (Except for what currently fits the teenagers.) I brought up anything at all likely to fit my 9-year-old this year, and I either put away or set aside to give away anything fleecy, one drawer-full of pants, and all of the long-sleeved shirts not specifically arranged into outfits. (Which is, of course, why this week’s projected highs have dropped from 80-ish to 60-ish. You’re welcome.) I also reorganized the still-too-big-for-my-9-year-old clothes into types–there’s now a bin of shorts, a bin of tops, a bin of pjs, and so on. Good times!
Tuesday saw me running around doing mom things until I hadn’t the concentration for a book review, and yesterday kind of did, too. This morning, however–after knitting with my friend from 9-10–I am determined to play a bit of catchup and review Katherine Applegate’s Wishtree, which I finished listening to earlier this week.
It was lovely.
Not that we should be surprised by this, of course, Katherine Applegate being routinely lovely. But Wishtree has the added novelty of being narrated by a tree, and it works even better than you might hope. Red (the tree) is inhabited by multiple animal families, and Applegate’s explanations of how the different species name themselves and their offspring is fabulous; the humans in the surrounding neighborhood, by contrast, may be in the minority as characters go, and yet it’s their actions that inform the book. Trees (and animals) aren’t supposed to talk to humans, you see–but how else can they share wisdom gained in centuries of living? Especially when the world (and the neighborhood) are in need of that exact kind of wisdom once again?
When such a short book makes you both laugh and cry, you’ve generally got a winner, and that’s absolutely the truth here. This almost-fable brings the both funny and the feels; don’t miss it.