Five Senses and Feelings: If I Were a Tree by Andrea Zimmerman

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IF I WERE A TREE, I KNOW HOW I'D BE.

I'D STAND TOWERING TALL, HIGH ABOVE ALL.

Two children, brother and sister, set off with their parents on a camping trip into a forest. So many trees! How does it feel to be a tree?

I'D FEEL NESTS IN MY BARK, BATS HIDING TILL DARK.

THE CLIMBING OF BOOTS, AND WORMS BY MY ROOTS.

And what would they taste if they could be a tree?

PEBBLES AND STONES, OLD BURIED BONES...

What does a tree smell? . . .

HONEY AND BEES, SKUNK ON THE BREEZE?

But what does a tree hear?

FAR THUNDER'S LOW GROWL, THE HOOT OF AN OWL?

Under the tall trees, the two realize that the trees, living creatures like them, sense their world both differently and the same, in Andrea Zimmerman's elegant, evocative verse. In a complex stanza form, beginning and ending in the same question, the author inserts a quatrain with appealing internal rhymes that reveal how a tree senses its environment. With the lovely color print illustrations of Jing Jing Tsong, noted writer Zimmerman's If I Were a Tree (Lee and Low Books, 2021) unites child and tree, filling up their senses with the beauty of sensing the world like a tree. This poetic book is a natural for across-the curriculum science for fall, with its emphasis on the seasonal changes and a wonderful review of the five senses, and also offers an intense lesson on the sensory system of trees, an experience of sharing and being at one with the world all around, seeing ...

HILLS MISTY WITH FOG, THE LIFE IN A LOG.

Says Kirkus' starred review, "Enjoy and observe nature with all your senses."