Description: "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"--
Review Quotes: Cole 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)
--The Wall Street Journal Cole's intricately detailed pencil drawings fill every spread with dense foliage, populated by a wide variety of wildlife.
--Booklist The life of an oak tree is beautifully depicted in this engaging informational picture book. . . Cole's detailed, fine-lined pen-and-ink illustrations bring depth and life to the natural elements on each spread.
--The Horn Book A thought-provoking book with lavish artwork that rewards close, and closer, looks.
--Kirkus Reviews n intricate b&w spreads, Cole traces the life of a single oak from sprouting acorn to mature tree, detailing its relationship with the changing world around it. . . It's easy to imagine touching the oak's bark and feeling its crisp leaves in this study of an organism living among others.
--Publishers Weekly The book presents the expanse of the tree's life and the life it facilitates with a sense of awe. . . The intricate gray-scale illustrations, rendered in Micron pen on Bristol paper, deftly convey the forest environment, calling up the quiet of the tree's slow growth as well as the hustle and bustle of the forest denizens.
--Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books