Peek Through Nature: Tree

What’s it about?

The story.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter, a tree is a world in itself, and Britta Teckentrup's illustrations show every stage of that world with extraordinary beauty. Patricia Hegarty's rhyming text traces the year through the tree: the first buds, the full canopy, the falling leaves, the bare branches and snow, and then the slow return of spring. The series' signature die-cut pages let readers peek through holes in the shape of leaves or knotholes to glimpse what's hidden on the next spread, an owl in its hollow, a family of squirrels, insects in the bark. The book teaches seasons, habitat, and the relationships between trees and the animals that depend on them, but it does so entirely through immersive, sensory picture-book experience rather than didactic instruction. The first and most celebrated book in the Peek Through Nature series, and the one most consistently recommended as the entry point. Particularly beloved by adults, the combination of Teckentrup's colour palette and Hegarty's lyrical text makes Tree as much a pleasure to read as to look at. A strong gift at any age in the 2–7 range.