100 Books Like Listen to the Language of the Trees

I love how detailed this book is, bursting with species to learn about. Nature can be a beast. What happens when a hurricane hits and ocean animals have their home turned upside down? I was on the edge of my seat, wondering what would happen to the animals. I love that the book shows how mangroves are trees that form a refuge in a storm.

This book is illustrated with intricate details of mangrove plants and the animals they host, making me want to grab my mask and snorkel and catch the next flight to the Caribbean to see them. Full disclosure: I studied mangroves for over 10 years, so I am biased, but they are really awesome trees. 

I loved being transported through time and space on a journey to learn about redwoods, the tallest trees on Earth. This is one of those great books where the illustrations show what is being described in the text, but in a way that makes the reader feel immersed—Roman soldiers riding the subway?

I liked learning about how redwoods start their lives and how they survive in their environment, including when fires strike. I love how the book includes the dangerous work of scientists studying redwoods and amazing scientific facts about how redwoods create their own rain and host other plants and animals that live high up in the redwood canopy. 

I love this book because it teaches plant science. How do the trees actually grow so high? 

There aren’t a lot of picture books that include how photosynthesis works or how water is transported within a tree’s trunk. This book explains the plant physiology behind tree growth. Trees are, after all, the tallest things on Earth, but I have found that few books explain how they get to be so tall. We sort of take it for granted that tall things were always tall, didn’t we?

This book compares some of the world’s tallest animals and landmarks to the tallest tree species in the world: the coast redwood, giant sequoia, and Sitka spruce. While this text repeats some of the same information as Redwoods by Jason Chin, this book has more explanation on the biology of plant growth. 

I love this book because it has everything I want to see in a book about trees: parts of a tree, beautiful illustrations of their root systems and canopies, pictures of animals that live in the trees, and descriptions of how trees defend themselves. It is brimming with science but is written in a friendly way that doesn’t make me feel like I’m sitting in a lecture. The book explains how trees sense the world around them and how animals like monkeys, squirrels and birds disperse tree seeds.

My favorite part is the section on tree habitats, which includes tropical rain forest, temperate rain forest, swamp forest and snow forest, complete with how each habitat is structured and who lives there. I feel like I’m in an immersive museum exhibit when I read this book.

This is a wonderful book to expand our compassion regarding less charismatic but highly important and magnificent beings – the trees.

I was really captivated by all the interesting facts that I had no idea about, and the gorgeous watercolor illustrations made it even more entertaining. Now, when I go to the forest, I think about the roots being highly connected underneath, about Mother Trees nurturing their young and exchanging nutrients and information with other trees.

Having all this new knowledge makes the forest feel even more alive to me. It also reminded me that even if we are not aware of it, humans are part of the infinite natural web of connections. Our actions affect the forests as much as the lack of forests affects our psychology and behavior. 

I discovered Wohlleben’s book when I was writing about my own emergent relationship with trees. I was learning to think with quantum field theory and new materialism, and very conscious of the way some of my writing was sounding like I was teetering on the edge of madness.

Wohlleben offered me insights into my own relations with trees, and he enabled me to articulate not only my love of trees but the Earth’s dependence on them as they grow together in old-growth forests. At the same time, Wohlleben makes horribly clear the motivation of politicians globally to destroy old-growth forests out of their own ignorance and greed, intensified by the loggers who lie to them and hide the truth from them. 

I first became aware of this beautiful book when I shared a stage with the illustrator at a literary event. I was captivated by her cover illustration which is like a ‘Where’s Wally’ tree containing 70 hidden animals. Once I got my copy home (and after I found most of the animals) I flipped to explanations of the superpowers of trees. These are guaranteed to shift your youngsters’ perspectives. Nonfiction stories invite them to imagine themselves in the field with well-known conservationists and activists who have dedicated themselves to saving trees and their inhabitants. I love that so many of these heroes are women which, hopefully, will encourage more girls to embrace science.

The title is a refrain that rings around the world, as the children in two families, in two settings, plant a tree.

As in my book, time is a driving element here, bringing to light the cumulative effects of planting trees. Those effects, from clean air and soil retention to the bounty of fruit and the blessings of shade, are beautifully realized in the final page that brings it all back to the young characters and by inference, to the reader.

A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America by author and naturalist Donald Culross Peattie is probably the very best book on trees that I have ever read. I used this book (and also his book on Western trees) as a marvelous resource when I was working on my books. 

I learned many a new thing from this book, things I could not find in books written by botanists or horticulturists. This in large part is because Peattie was first and foremost, a naturalist. He tells the reader things that others didn’t bother to mention (for example, that with Honeylocust trees, each branch is of only one sex). The author also has a wonderful way of writing that makes the text come alive…always interesting.  As a naturalist, Peattie looks at the whole picture; one of the few writers about trees who was also a dedicated ecologist. A… show more.

I found this guidebook the best for identifying species and explaining their characteristics within a forest. Knowing the species improved my forest photgraphy greatly.