Award-winning and best-selling author-illustrator Lydia Monks, illustrator of franchise What the Ladybird Heard, beautifully tells the tale of the life of one tree, from a young sapling to a mighty oak, becoming the beating heart of the community she lived in, right up until the day they cut her down.
Inspired by a campaign to save trees near her Sheffield home Lydia Monks said, “In 2014, Sheffield council started cutting down thousands of healthy, mature street trees. One of the trees on the list to be felled was outside my daughter’s school. It was a big old ash tree, that had probably stood there for 150 years, long before the school was built.
The school children played around it after school, and it seemed like a friendly presence on the street. I wondered about what the tree had witnessed over the years, and that inspired the book. Adoette is a Native American name which means ‘large tree’. Lots of people, including myself, joined campaign groups to save the Sheffield trees, and happily the old ash tree is still standing today.”
Read the full Bookseller article here and book your tickets to see Lydia talk about her new book at Bath Children’s Literature Festival here.
