Children's Review: Survivor Tree

Those under the impression that a hero must be a sentient being may reconsider once they've read Marcie Colleen and Aaron Becker's Survivor Tree. This reverberant picture book tells the true story of a tree that not only lived through the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center but endures as a symbol of hope at the very spot where, for one moment in time, all hope seemed to be lost.

The tree's story, told through mildly lyrical omniscient narration, begins unassumingly: "A tree stood steel-straight and proud at the foot of the towers that filled its sky. It grew, mostly unnoticed, silently marking the seasons." The tree changed with the seasons without incident for nearly 30 years, until the September day when "the perfect blue sky exploded."

The tree appears to be a casualty of the violence on 9/11: a dystopian image shows it burned and collapsed in a bed of rubble. But intrepid recovery workers see signs of life--a few green leaves--and the tree is whisked away and planted in new soil. As it rehabilitates, workers honor the tree's history with a heartrending gesture: "Two stone blocks were placed in its stunted shadow--a memorial of makeshift towers in a makeshift home." The tree doesn't blossom on schedule that spring, but when it's finally ready, bloom it does. Nearly a decade later, "it was time to go home," to the site of the devastation, which became a public memorial.

In an author's note, Colleen (The Bear's Garden) says that the tree is a Callery pear, which is known for its "brilliant seasonal display: white blossoms in spring, green leaves in summer, red leaves in autumn, and bare branches in winter," all of which Becker (A Stone for Sascha) captures in felicitous detail with watercolors and colored pencils. He also seizes on opportunities to work dabs of charged color into his illustrations. Workers' green helmets, their orange or yellow safety vests, the red shirt of a young visitor to the 9/11 memorial--all suggest the unsinkability of post-9/11 city denizens. One particularly noteworthy image shows a side view of the regenerated tree, a thin horizontal strip of earth separating what onlookers see when they admire it and, beneath the ground, the Callery pear's roots clinging reassuringly to the soil. Survivor Tree, which marks the 20-year anniversary of 9/11, is like its subject: a stately monument to resilience. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author

Shelf Talker: Marking the 20th anniversary of 9/11, this august picture book tells the true story of a tree that survived the World Trade Center attacks.

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