The front cover actually gives the author as ‘written by a book with help from Eoin McLaughlin’ and this mischievous tone is echoed in Guilherme Karsten’s bold and witty artwork and design. The book as author just can’t resist being involved in all aspects of its production, adding notes to all the publisher’s and book flap information, but mainly it tells readers that once it was a beautiful pine tree visited by birds and squirrels who eat the pine seeds in the cones, poo them out and start another tree. After Derek the squirrel has done his work in spreading the seeds, Barbara the dung beetle rolls the poo around and deposits it in a different part of the forest where after a while, nourished by rich soil, the sun and the rain, a new tree grows… until it is chopped down and minced and chewed up by a wonderfully drawn machine. Then the tree becomes paper, and finally a book, which it is very happy about because stories can amuse, enchant and inform young readers, and importantly, tell them about just how a seed becomes a tree becomes a book. With a free audiobook, the process of seed to book will not only inform readers from 5 or 6 upwards but amuse them too – and any adult who shares the book with them.
Eve Bearne
I Once Was a Tree by Eoin McLaughlin
Illustrated by Guilherme Karsten
Nosy Crow
ISBN 9781805130406
£12.99
Published 2025
