Bruce Hiscock- The Big Tree

The Big Tree is the second book in the Big series and has always been a favorite with readers. I think this is because it combines American history with the history and science of the tree, and also because everyone likes trees. This was said about the book when it first came out:

Bright, warm paintings......reflect the subtle partnership between humankind and nature. Booklist, January 15, 1991

Outstanding Science Trade Book of 1991
The Children's Book Council

This tree stands in my neighbor's yard about a ten minute walk up the hill from my house. I have tried to draw the tree and the house very accurately. Even the dogs, Joshua and Rebecca, are real dogs. To do the cover big tree photo

illustration I actually made sketches while lying on the ground looking up at this huge maple. Here is a photo from that perspective.
There are several ways to tell the age of a tree without cutting it down and counting the rings. Tree experts use a device that drills into the tree and extracts a long core of wood about as big around as a pencil. They can count the rings from this core. I decided to estimate the age of the tree by measuring around it and comparing that measurement to stumps of other sugar maples where I could count the rings. There is lots of logging in the woods here, and so finding good size stumps was fairly easy. Averaging all this data, I calculated that the big tree was a seedling in 1775. The house was built sometime around 1805. kids and the big tree

All this ties in nicely with United States history, especially since a famous battle of the Revolution was fought about 20 miles from the tree. War always seems like an incredible waste to me, and so I did not put a battle scene in the book, but rather, the sad aftermath.
When I did the illustration of a seed growing and leaves coming out it was spring, and I was able to draw these looking at real sprouts and leaves. To study roots, I dug up a root drawing

small sugar maple that I was going to cut anyway and did this drawing of roots. This is my favorite way to work, right from nature.
The tree is doing just fine these days, and the 4th of July party still goes on under the shade of its strong, old limbs.