Trees are familiar and lovely signs of life for most people, including fruit trees, evergreens, and colorful maple trees in autumn. Sometimes they're so ubiquitous, we don't even notice them. Entice your readers with one of the world's most unusual, attention-grabbing trees: the dragon's blood tree. Explorers will learn about this strange tree, including the source of its name, where it's found, and its uses. Age-appropriate text covers important science concepts and vivid images take readers up-close to a tree they may never see in real life. Fact boxes and a graphic organizer enhance the narrative.
'The Blood Tree is a high-throttle journey through the realms of light and dark. It gives readers a glimpse into the angels that both safeguard and exploit humanity.'
For poet Tiana Clark, trees will never be just trees. They will also and always be a row of gallows from which Black bodies once swung. This is an image that she cannot escape, but one that she has learned to lean into as she delves into personal and public histories, explicating memories and muses around race, elegy, family, and faith by making and breaking forms as well as probing mythology, literary history, her own ancestry, and, yes, even Rihanna. I Can’t Talk About the Trees without the Blood, because Tiana cannot engage with the physical and psychic landscape of the South without seeing the braided trauma of the broken past—she will always see blood on the leaves.
It was the last of the ebbing days, the brink of the new season. It was the murky hours, the clove between sunset and sunrise. It was a tall tree with deep roots and it had been bleeding for a long while. As summer falls into autumn, Hollie Starling is hit by the heart-stopping news that her father has died by suicide. Thrust into a state of 'grief on hard mode', Hollie feels underserved by current attitudes toward grief and so seeks another way through the dark. Following her first year without her father, Hollie embraces her lifelong interest in folklore and turns to the healing power of nature, the changing seasons and the rituals of ancient communities. The Bleeding Tree is an unflinching year-zero guidebook to grief that shows us that by looking back to past traditions of bereavement we can all find our own way forward. 'Starling's account of family life is riveting and narrated with grace and honesty, counterpointing the personal with the mythic.' - Irish Times
In the late 1630s, lured by the promise of the New World, Andrea Stuart’s earliest known maternal ancestor, George Ashby, set sail from England to settle in Barbados. He fell into the life of a sugar plantation owner by mere chance, but by the time he harvested his first crop, a revolution was fully under way: the farming of sugar cane, and the swiftly increasing demands for sugar worldwide, would not only lift George Ashby from abject poverty and shape the lives of his descendants, but it would also bind together ambitious white entrepreneurs and enslaved black workers in a strangling embrace. Stuart uses her own family story—from the seventeenth century through the present—as the pivot for this epic tale of migration, settlement, survival, slavery and the making of the Americas. As it grew, the sugar trade enriched Europe as never before, financing the Industrial Revolution and fuelling the Enlightenment. And, as well, it became the basis of many economies in South America, played an important part in the evolution of the United States as a world power and transformed the Caribbean into an archipelago of riches. But this sweet and hugely profitable trade—“white gold,” as it was known—had profoundly less palatable consequences in its precipitation of the enslavement of Africans to work the fields on the islands and, ultimately, throughout the American continents. Interspersing the tectonic shifts of colonial history with her family’s experience, Stuart explores the interconnected themes of settlement, sugar and slavery with extraordinary subtlety and sensitivity. In examining how these forces shaped her own family—its genealogy, intimate relationships, circumstances of birth, varying hues of skin—she illuminates how her family, among millions of others like it, in turn transformed the society in which they lived, and how that interchange continues to this day. Shifting between personal and global history, Stuart gives us a deepened understanding of the connections between continents, between black and white, between men and women, between the free and the enslaved. It is a story brought to life with riveting and unparalleled immediacy, a story of fundamental importance to the making of our world.
The secret world of trees is revealed in this beautiful and absorbing guide to the giants of the plant world. Trees occur naturally throughout the world and have been a part of human history almost as long as humans have existed. Used for shelter, tools, fuel, and food, they also help supply the atmosphere with oxygen and form astonishingly diverse ecosystems, as well as some of the world’s most beautiful landscapes. Now the intricate world of leafy woodlands and abundant rainforests is revealed in this extensive visual guide to trees, exploring their key scientific traits and their ecological importance, as well as their enduring significance in human history and culture. From ancient oaks and great redwoods to lush banyans and imposing kapoks, The Tree Book reveals the anatomy, behaviors, and beauty of these incredible plants and habitats in detail. Combining natural history and a scientific overview with a wider look at the history, uses, symbolism, and mythology of trees, this book is a new kind of guide to these fascinating organisms.
The Complete Language of Trees is a comprehensive encyclopedia providing the meanings, powers, facts, and folklore for over 400 types of trees--now in a pocket-size edition for easy, on-the-go reference. Along with a stunning visual depiction, each entry provides the tree's scientific and common name, characteristics, and historic and hidden properties from mythology, legends, and folklore. Discover the lore of trees, including: Hackberry Tree - encourages someone to continuously do their best Manchineel Tree - it is so toxic that the smoke from a burning tree can cause blindness, and it is not even advised to inhale the air around the tree Bark from the Bird Cherry Tree was placed on doors during medieval times to ward off plague Washi paper is created from the inner bark of the Paper Mulberry Tree. Pando is a Quaking Aspen colony that is 108 acres wide (about the size of 83 football fields!). It is technically one tree. Imagine developing a spiritual connection with a tree in a way that exceeds visual perception; where learning its meaning and value simultaneously improves your own mental and physical wellness. Throughout history, floriographies--flower dictionaries--have gained notoriety for regulating human emotions and giving depth, symbolism, and meaning to extremely delicate aspects of nature. Following the success of The Complete Language of Herbs and its predecessor The Complete Language of Flowers, author S. Theresa Dietz continues this custom with The Complete Language of Trees. Coupled with two indexes, one for searching by common tree name and the other organized by meaning, Dietz cleverly connects quality time in nature with the overall improvement of mental health by developing a stunningly depicted dictionary for gardeners, environmentalists, and nature lovers alike.
A jaw-dropping collection of incredible facts about our weird and wonderful world The bizarre beasts, incredible places, and peculiar phenomena featured in this mind-blowing compendium are not just really weird - they're really real. This wacky book explores our world's most exciting oddities. Did you know there's a plant that eats mice? Or that you can dip your toe in a rainbow-colored river? From fiery tornadoes flying across the sky to huge sinkholes eating up the earth, each example is illustrated with jaw-dropping images and handy fast facts that provide the explanations behind the stories. Whether it's geography, people, places, animals, plants, or weather, 1,000 Amazing Weird Facts is the ideal book for curious young minds who are fascinated by our weird and wonderful world.
Mike Sullivan loves his adopted city of San Francisco, and he loves trees. In The Trees of San Francisco he has combined his passions, offering a striking and handy compendium of botanical information, historical tidbits, cultivation hints, and more. Sullivan's introduction details the history of trees in the city, a fairly recent phenomenon. The text then piques the reader's interest with discussions of 71 city trees. Each tree is illustrated with a photograph--with its common and scientific names prominently displayed--and its specific location within San Francisco, along with other sites; frequently a close-up shot of the tree is included. Sprinkled throughout are 13 sidelights relating to trees; among the topics are the city's wild parrots and the trees they love; an overview of the objectives of the Friends of the Urban Forest; and discussions about the link between Australia's trees and those in the city, such as the eucalyptus. The second part of the book gets the reader up and about, walking the city to see its trees. Full-page color maps accompany the seven detailed tours, outlining the routes; interesting factoids are interspersed throughout the directions. A two-page color map of San Francisco then highlights 25 selected neighborhoods ideal for viewing trees, leading into a checklist of the neighborhoods and their trees.
