Thea's Tree - Alison Jackson

Illustrated by Janet Pedersen
Dutton Children's Books, 2008
32 pages
Rating: 4
Endpapers: Dark blue

Thea Teawinkle, a budding scientist who lives in Topeka, Kansas, plants a purple seed as the beginning of a choose-your-own research project. But it is a very unusual plant -- making the dirt ooze and turn purple, growing excedingly rapidly and quite huge. And so begins a series of letters between Thea and various experts in their fields.

Thea's letters show the rapid growth, the strange noises she hears from above, and items (like a huge golden egg) that begin to appear beneath the giant immovable "tree." The information she receives - from all sorts of sources - doesn't help her at all...but they're such fun to read.

There's humor everywhere - in the watercolor illustrations that completely cover each green-bordered page, in the condescending answers she gets, even all the salutations cover the gambit from Enthusiastically, Carl Capshaw, Curator to Doubtfully, Ada Adler, First Bank of Kansas to Importantly, Anna Applebaum, Arboreal Acquisitions. Such fun.

Perfect for a letter-writing lesson. And how about a twisted faiy tale?