A beautiful wordless book that views a tree and a river bend through the centuries as civilizaitons rise and fall in that location. The civilizations are clearly fictional, but with recognizable stages.

PreS-Gr 2—Nature bites back after a tree and a river cohabit in a bucolic and wordless setting as humans overbuild.
A catastrophic event wipes the slate clean, while tiny acorns reboot the process by the last page. This meditation on
time, climate change, and humanity presents an otherworldly command of watercolor-like paintings for children.

I was so excited to read this book when I saw it was by one of my favorite authors/illustrators! It did not disappoint. The illustrations were just as beautiful as they were in [b:The Journey Trilogy|34129067|The Journey Trilogy|Aaron Becker|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1498830137l/34129067._SX50_.jpg|55165396]. ( )

A wonderful wordless picture book from Caldecott Honor Recipient, Aaron Becker, that depicts the jouney of a tree across time. The description is very accurate: A spectacular time-lapse portrait of humankind—and our impact on the natural world—from a Caldecott Honor–winning master of the wordless form. ( )

Aaron Becker is known for his work on films like "The Polar Express," and you can see the influence of his cinematic background in his books. His newest is a time-lapse wordless story about the evolution of a civilization that arises and metamorphoses around an enduring tree alongside a river.

The imagined cityscapes are wondrous: intricately drawn, ranging from medieval to futuristic and steampunk. The lack of words in the book allow you to fill in the story with your imagination, but the breadth and depth of the illustrations do as well.

We see hope transmute into glory; occasional decay and destruction; and in the end, a return to hope.

In an interview, Becker noted that he was inspired by living in the city of Granada, which, he observed, was built first upon Roman ruins, and then Catholic castles and cathedrals. Layers of history were built into the very walls of the city. It gave him an awareness of the “experience of time” which he wanted to explore in his books. He said he felt that showing the accretion of time in a particular place works even better with just pictures rather than words. He wanted readers to think about how human history is so much larger than one’s own experience of it, and yet it is all connected.

Becker accomplishes this goal by combining the precision of ink with the soft and dreamy quality of muted watercolors to create a series of related but different architectural wonders and exotic landscapes. Each stage of civilization contributes to the next. The progression allows readers to see how both history and culture can be gleaned from the art and artifacts around us. A myriad of tiny details ensure that kids will pour over these pages for hours, seeing what endured in each mutation and what changed; filling in their own narrative; and maybe dreaming up their own alternative outcomes.

Discussion: Some of my favorite books are wordless. They allow children to supply the dialogue through their imaginations, forcing them to think about what is being depicted and what it might mean, allowing for endless creative interpretations. The pictures in this book are not as simple to analyze as, for example, the wordless books by Tommi dePaola (which are in fact meant for much younger children), so it asks readers to concentrate and ponder. Younger readers can still enjoy this book on a purely visual level at the very least, and those not as adept at reading words will discover just how much they can figure out by other means.

Evaluation: This is definitely a book for all ages to explore together. ( )