Mighty: The Story of an Oak Tree Ecosystem [Hardcover]

This stunning, profound book explores the life cycle of a tree—not just through a season but across decades—as well as the other living things that depend upon it. How can something stay itself and yet change and grow? The oak tree shows us how.

Sometimes things happen by chance. A blue jay drops an acorn, a lucky acorn that happens to fall in just the right place and begins to grow.

Though it begins life as a tiny part of the forest floor, the acorn soon grows large enough to provide shelter for a fox, host for insects that in turn provide food for songbirds, and a home for many small creatures. Animals hibernate in its branches and among its roots, and humans rest in the cool shade it provides.

As generations of living things pass by the tree, the forest develops, and a town begins to grow. And the lucky tree is always there, though its form and size change.

In this picture book about the life cycle of a tree and the plants and animals that depend upon it, Henry Cole reminds us, in elegant prose and stunning black & white illustrations, of the importance of interconnectedness and the passage of time.

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard SelectionCole takes readers on a gentle journey via this beautifully illustrated guide to a mighty oak tree’s life. . . A storylike text, with tender turns and intricately laced drawings, this is the best of nature writing.
—School Library Journal (starred review)

In drawings of dazzling intricacy, the illustrator Henry Cole traces the flourishing of a single tree in 'Mighty: The Story of an Oak Tree Ecosystem' a picture book for children ages 4-8.
—The Wall Street Journal

Cole's intricately detailed pencil drawings fill every spread with dense foliage, populated by a wide variety of wildlÓ8