Title: The Tree That Never Grew
Author: Matilda Nicole Rothon
Publisher: XlibrisAU
ISBN: 978-1-5245-6205-2
Pages: 24
Genre: Illustrate Children’s Book
Reviewed by: Beth Adams
Pacific Book Review
In New York City’s Central Park lives a little tree named Poppy. This story is about Poppy, and how it learns a lesson about life. Author and artist Matilda Nicole Rothon has created a delightful illustrated children’s book titled, The Tree That Never Grew. Poppy was shorter than the other trees and couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t grow. It actually feared for its life, thinking it was going to die at the young age of sixteen, knowing other trees live more than one hundred years. As all of these thoughts were spinning in its head, low and behold the truth came out, and the reason explained. What was the reason? Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out.
The story brings a moral to children that there is a reason for everything and sometimes it may be hard to figure out, but in time all becomes known and revealed. In the case of Poppy, it eventually became one of the most famous trees in Central Park, and people would come to see it and even take selfies in front of it.
Matilda Nicole Rothon adorns her fanciful storybook with her original artwork, showing the rudimentary feelings and expressions of emotions encountered by Poppy throughout this sequence of events. As the story comes to an end, children will drift off to sleep with an understanding of certain reasons for why things are what they are; the way they have been created. It may seem bad at times, but once you understand the facts, all becomes good.
This becomes more impressive when, at the end of the book, you learn some personal information about the author. One then sees the book with a different light and retrospectively begins to understand why Poppy had so many sad thoughts. In the end everything works out fine – the way a good children’s storybook should end.
The Tree That Never Grew is truly an original story amidst the thousands, or hundreds of thousands of bedtime stories on the market. For the reasons mentioned above, I feel this book will hold up to the goal of achieving a place on children’s nightstands, or family libraries, and reached often for the lulling theme of being okay to be different. Shorter perhaps than other trees, Poppy has a special quality – one which sets it apart and makes it famous. Everyone has a special quality as well.
