Tree Is a Plant

A tree is the biggest plant that grows.

Trees can live for a very long time, and they are alive all year long, even when they look dead in winter.

In this newly illustrated book, you will learn how a tree grows and how it gets food and water. You can also find out what happens to water after it travels through a tree's roots, branches, and leaves, and how to figure out a tree's age.

Clyde Robert Bulla's simple and concise text and Stacey Schuett's lush illustrations follow a tree's continuous life cycle through spring, summer, winter, and fall.

Cut an apple open. Inside you'll find tiny seeds. Plant one and it will grow from a sprig with just two leaves into a tree with apples to eat. A classic text, first published in 1960, is reissued here with lush art in glowing color. Suggested activities will let readers participate in the process of discovery as they investigate how trees absorb water and learn how to find out the age of a tree.

School Library Journal

PreS-Gr 2-A newly illustrated version of a 1960 publication. Although the title and beginning pages indicate a broad look at trees, the focus is on the apple tree. Through impressionistic paintings and a simple text, the book describes its seasonal cycle. Bulla discusses the parts of the tree and their functions without complex explanations of the mechanisms involved in fruit formation, photosynthesis, etc. "The blossoms last only a few days.-The apples are where the blossoms were before." Concepts such as water intake are emphasized with arrows indicating its route within the plant. The charming paintings, many of which are full-page and large enough for comfortable group sharing, depict numerous outdoor scenes peopled by children of various ethnic backgrounds. An appended section includes instructions for a transpiration experiment and suggests a method for measuring the age of a tree. Gail Saunders-Smith's Apple Trees (Bridgestone, 1998), illustrated with photos, also takes a seasonal approach, but it has a more controlled vocabulary and contains much less information than Bulla's book. Saunders-Smith's From Blossom to Fruit (Pebble, 1998) is exclusively about apple formation, with a very simplified vocabulary and close-up color photos.-Lynda Ritterman, Atco Elementary School, Waterford, NJ Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Clyde Robert Bulla is the author of over fifty books for children including The Secret Valley and The Story of Valentine’s Day. He has been writing since 1946 when he published his first book, The Donkey Cart. Mr. Bulla was the first recipient of the Southern California Council on Children’s Literature award for distinguished contribution to the field. He lives in Los Angeles, California.