The Halloween Tree

September 2, 2019
On a Christmas tree farm, a curmudgeonly needleless sapling grumbles that it dreads being uprooted: “I don’t like lights, I don’t like decorations, and I don’t like people.” After a housing development replaces the farm, the gnarled tree ends up on a family’s lawn, where neighborhood kids turn its knotty branches into a pirate ship, a hideout, a spaceship, and a dragon. Martinez fills this 8×8 with vivid digital illustrations suggestive of animated cartoons, cleverly tweaking the tree’s facial expressions to morph from grumpy (amid Christmas tree buyers) to tolerant (serving as the kids’ playground) to forlorn (when winter keeps the children indoors) to chagrin (when the parents threaten to cut it down) to satisfied—if somewhat skeptical—when the youngsters decorate it for Halloween and exclaim, “Trick or tree!” A slight yet diverting holiday offering. Ages 3–7.

August 1, 2019
A grouchy sapling on a Christmas tree farm finds that there are better things than lights and decorations for its branches. A Grinch among the other trees on the farm is determined never to become a sappy Christmas tree--and never to leave its spot. Its determination makes it so: It grows gnarled and twisted and needle-less. As time passes, the farm is swallowed by the suburbs. The neighborhood kids dare one another to climb the scary, grumpy-looking tree, and soon, they are using its branches for their imaginative play, the tree serving as a pirate ship, a fort, a spaceship, and a dragon. But in winter, the tree stands alone and feels bereft and lonely for the first time ever, and it can't look away from the decorated tree inside the house next to its lot. When some parents threaten to cut the "horrible" tree down, the tree thinks, "Not now that my limbs are full of happy children," showing how far it has come. Happily for the tree, the children won't give up so easily, and though the tree never wished to become a Christmas tree, it's perfectly content being a "trick or tree." Martinez's digital illustrations play up the humorous dichotomy between the happy, aspiring Christmas trees (and their shoppers) and the grumpy tree, and the diverse humans are satisfyingly expressive. Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard. (Picture book. 4-8)

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