Tree - Story Snug
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Tree by Patricia Hegarty & Britta Teckentrup

Tree is a beautifully illustrated, peek-through, rhyming story that shows the changes that take place during each different season. It’s a great book to read throughout the year but particularly good for autumn when children are often more aware of leaves changing colour and falling off the trees.

The Story: An owl sits in the trunk ofย a bare tree covered with snow. He observes the changes throughout the seasons and the readerย is introduced to a variety of animals. The book goesย full circle, even the owl disappears before spring comes again andย all the animals come out to play.

Britta Teckentrup’s stunning illustrations complement Patricia Hegarty’s easy to read rhyming text. You can peek through the hole in the sturdy cover to see the owl sitting in the tree, the owl can be seen through a hole in the trunk throughout most of the story. More holes show animals, insects and birds playing in or sitting in the tree. The changing tree is the focus of every page, there are two lines of text underneath and animals, including foxes, squirrels and bears, appear according to the season. The illustrations are awesome and full of detail, my favourite spread shows the tree against a midsummer night’s sky and my daughter loves watching the little spider build his web on the trunk, it gets bigger throughout the book.

The book inspired us toย talk about how trees look different during the different seasons and we created our own four seasons tree. We traced the tree in the book andย cutย four templates out of thick brown cardboard. Then we scored them down the middle so that we could fold them. We used cotton wool and glitter for winter, fingerprinted blossom for spring, stuck torn up tissue paper and made apples for summer and cut out autumn coloured leaf shapes from magazines for autumn.

Tree Seasons Story Snug

Then we folded the four trees and stuck them together.

Four seasons tree Story Snug

Tree would be a lovely book to include in a classroom topic on Time and The Seasons, a general topic about Nature or a more specific topic on Trees. Children could have fun trying to recreate the pictures and design their own four seasons trees.

Age Range: 3 to 6

Author: Patricia Hegarty / Illustrator: Britta Teckentrup

Thank you to Little Tiger Press for sending us a review copy of this beautiful, beautiful book which would make a great addition to a Key Stage One classroom or a home bookshelf.

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22 responses to “Tree by Patricia Hegarty & Britta Teckentrup”


  1. Kids of the Wild avatar

    Sounds like great book and I love the crafty seasonal artwork too. Perfect for classrooms as you say.


    1. Catherine avatar

      It’s a gorgeous book and we had a lot of fun making the four seasons tree ๐Ÿ™‚


  2. Stacie @ BeachBoundBooks avatar

    I love the cover of Tree and your activity is simply wonderful! I am going to share it with my daughter. I think her boys will enjoy creating their own trees.


    1. Catherine avatar

      The tree activity was really fun and gave us lots to talk about ๐Ÿ™‚


  3. Cheryl Carpinello avatar

    Looks like a great book for early grades. Thanks for sharing on the Kid Lit Blog Hop.


    1. Catherine avatar

      Tree is a fantastic book for an early grade classroom.


  4. Kate avatar

    This is truly beautiful, and would be perfect for season chats. Thanks for linking up with #TriedTested


    1. Catherine avatar

      It is a gorgeous book, I love Britta Teckentrup’s illustrations ๐Ÿ™‚


  5. Emma avatar

    This book is on my wishlist to buy after spotting it on the Little Tiger Press website. I love the craft you made too x


    1. Catherine avatar

      It’s a lovely book, a great coffee table book ๐Ÿ™‚


  6. Adventures of adam avatar

    What a brilliant activity to link with the book!


    1. Catherine avatar

      Thank you, we had a vague kind of idea about what we wanted to do but we also kind of made it up as we went along ๐Ÿ™‚


  7. Kim Carberry avatar

    This sounds like such a lovely book….
    Great ideas for some crafts to link with it x


    1. Catherine avatar

      It’s gorgeous, the kind of book where you just want to stroke the pages ๐Ÿ™‚


  8. tracey at Mummyshire avatar

    What a lovely book and I it’s great when you can take the themes of a book and bring them to life via craft. Popping across from #TriedTested
    xx


    1. Catherine avatar

      Our crafts are often inspired by picture books – this was a fun one to do ๐Ÿ™‚


  9. Renee @ Mother Daughter Book Reviews avatar

    I love your idea for a craft to accompany this sweet little book. My kids loved interactive books of any kind when they were little. We have some well-worn flaps in books we’ve read at home. Thanks for sharing in the Kid Lit Blog Hop.


    1. Catherine avatar

      We had a lot of fun using different craft mediums for each tree ๐Ÿ™‚


  10. Marjorie (MWD) avatar

    This does sound a beautiful book – I love the idea of the owl looking out throught the hole in the tree – and your artwork is splendid! Thank you for adding Tree to my book list at MWD.


    1. Catherine avatar

      My daughter loves the owl, he silently observes everything that goes on around him ๐Ÿ™‚


  11. Mary Hill avatar

    Hi, your activity is so beautiful and easy to do. Thanks for stopping by today and leaving a nice comment. I appreciate your support. I love this book too. I am starting to think about what to buy my grands for Christmas. They have lots of toys; so, I am going to buy books.


    1. Catherine avatar

      Thank you for visiting Story Snug too ๐Ÿ™‚ I almost always give books to children as presents these days, there are so many great children’s books to choose from.