Book Review: "The Great Oak Tree" by Zoë Armstrong, with illustrations by Amélie Videlo

 The Great Oak Tree

Zoë Armstrong & Amélie Videlo
Flying Eye Books, 2025
UK ISBN: 978-1-83874-217-1
US ISBN: 978-1-83874-963-7

A little blackbird called out rudely to the tree,
“Look how busy we all are, doing important
things. Why do you never move, Tree?”

“The tree is busy with important things too,”
cooed a wise old owl.

Zoë Armstrong knows about those important things, and with the help of Amélie Videlo’s lovely illustrations, takes young children on a journey to discover how an oak tree has lived to be 400 years old, and how it responds to the challenges of the changing seasons.

In just 24 pages, Zoë explains gently, and without recourse to technicalities: transpiration; pollination; respiration; photosynthesis; herbivory defense; gall formation; leaf abscission; acorn dispersal; cold-hardiness and winter dormancy; and interactions with invertebrates, birds, and mammals. The animals in the illustrations are cute, but they are all real—and recognizable: there are no fairies or unicorns in this book.

One thing that I really like about it is that the old oak has no voice. The owl and the blackbird speak for it, and thus Zoë deftly avoids the trap of ascribing human emotions to a tree. Instead, children are led gently to celebrate the oak for being an oak, with all of the mysterious and wonderful "otherness" that that implies.

If you want to make a gift of that mystery and wonder to a young person (from about three to seven years old, I would guess), you really should consider giving them this book. Although Zoë and Amélie are based in Europe, the tree and the animals are generic enough to be familiar to a North American reader, and the endpapers will introduce them to some oaks that may well be new to them. Highly recommended.

For more information about the book, visit the publisher's website here.