 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Kid Lit Joy and today I'm here to review Tree by Claire Saxby. This is illustrated by Jess Racklieft and it is a gorgeous narrative non-fiction book that is being published by Alan and Unwin who sent this to me for review, so thank you very much to them. This author illustrated duo worked together on a book called Iceberg which I don't know if was reviewed on this channel or my other channel. If it's not on this channel I'll do another review for it because it's an absolutely gorgeous narrative non-fiction story all about icebergs. Claire Saxby is just a master of weaving in factual information into a fictional text and this is the story of a 300 year old mountain ash that exists and it is almost a day in the life of this tree and the way that it supports the ecosystem that lives around it, the floor and the fauna. What I loved about this book aside from Jess Racklieft's gorgeous illustrations like this book is just visually stunning to look at. Claire Saxby's writing is beautiful, lyrical, she's incredible at choosing vocabulary and words to enhance her writing. I think I had examples down for word choice for misty, bustle, scaly, scurry, burrow, launch, like those are really powerful verbs that you can unpack with children like they're just absolutely gorgeous. As I said the illustrations, the watercolor in here is just so beautiful to look at and also the way that Jess Racklieft depicts different perspectives of this tree because it is so large from the very ground all the way to the tops of the tree. Honestly, I just, I read this book and I just had to go back and reread it straight away because I just loved the way that the words and the images encapsulated how old this tree was and how important it was to the environment. So again, that like this has an important message of, you know, we need to take care of our forests and take care of our really old trees because they are so important to the spaces where they exist and it's taken them time. Like these trees have lived through hundreds of years. They've seen so much history and are part of the fabric of forests. So it was totally blown away by this book. There is also, which is a trademark of these two, an incredibly beautiful fold-out page that sort of shows the scale, kind of included in one camera screen. The scale of it is just, just gorgeous. Ultimately, this is a great call to action for us as humans to take care of our environment, to take care of things that have been around for a really long time, particularly when trees like this are under threat from humans and deforestation and things like that. So it is absolutely gorgeous. I thoroughly enjoyed my reading experience with this. So thank you again to the publisher for sending me a copy. It's the kind of book that makes you want to read more and to learn more about the world around you. Like it just invites you in and it shares the secrets of the trees and it's just beautiful. In the comments, I'd love to know if you are planning on picking up Tree by Claire Saxby, or if you have other books that are similar in that narrative nonfiction vein that are just so immersive and beautiful and factual while still being an entertaining read. If you just want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment, feel free to leave any kind of Tree emoji down below. Otherwise, I hope that wherever you're in the world, you're staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.