Song of the trees

Mildred D. Taylor

Book - 2003

During the Depression, a rural black family deeply attached to the forest on their land tries to save it from being cut down by an unscrupulous white man.

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Subjects
Genres
Historical fiction
Fiction
Published
New York : Puffin Books 2003.
Language
English
Main Author
Mildred D. Taylor (-)
Other Authors
Jerry Pinkney (illustrator)
Physical Description
48 pages : illustrations ; 20 cm
Awards
Council on Interracial Books Award, 1974; New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year, 1975.
ISBN
9780142500750
Contents unavailable.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Song of the Trees, which won a Council on Interracial Books award, is based on one of the true stories the author's father used to tell about growing up black in Depression-era Mississippi. Here, when Papa is way down in Louisiana laying railroad tracks ""so his children can eat,"" white lumbermen move in and, offering Grandma $65 for all they care to take, begin cutting down trees on the family's land. Cassie's older brother Stacey goes off to fetch Papa, who arrives a few days later (just in time to save Cassie and her younger brothers from a belt-thrashing by Mr. Anderson, the crew leader whose efforts they've been obstructing), prepared, as the intruders come to realize, to blow up the forest if the white men don't clear off at once. In the beginning Cassie, who often listens to the trees singing though her brother says it's only the wind, wakes up to a gray morning--except for the trees of the forest, which ""stood dark, almost black, still holding the night."" Later she plays under her ""wintry-smelling hiding tree"" and. then, just before the lumbermen come, she's disturbed by the trees' ""eerie silence."" This is enough to make us feel their specialness, as elsewhere the prose is plain and direct the story al- is allowed to tell itself. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.