Dawn Patitucci

A whimsical story about appreciating what you have rather than always wanting more. Domino lays on his back staring up a tree, and decides it's not enough - he needs to build a treehouse. Then the treehouse isn't enough, so he needs a tree cottage, then mansion, then castle, etc. In an odd twist, he eventually ends up with another tree on the rooftop garden of his skyscraper, and repeats the same pattern of structures again, and again. Eventually, he ends up in space, where he constructs a space station to get to the moon. From there, he sees the Earth below him and parachutes back to his own backyard, where he can now appreciate the tree he started with.

Space-loving kids may object to some details in those last few pages (e.g. the fact that space stations don't take you to the moon), but I suppose the whole premise is sufficiently fantastical that these things can be overlooked. My bigger concern is that the story seems to conflate having a wild imagination with greed - most books that feature kids dreaming up elaborate structures like this present their architectural creativity in a positive light, rather than viewing it as a character flaw. I suppose the choice to repeat the same structures over and over in a telescoping manner does help to convey the excessiveness, but I think many young readers will be more focused on how cool it would be to build castles and skyscrapers in your backyard. To suggest they should stop dreaming and just be satisfied with what they have seems a bit disenchanting in this context, much as I'm on board with the idea of encouraging gratitude over greed.

The illustrations have a beautiful luminous quality that draws you in - this is a book that readers of all ages will enjoy poring over. The graphic design of the text is fun as well, with playful layouts and colors that emphasize its meaning. Overall, while I'm ambivalent about the way the moral is conveyed, this quirky addition to the "treehouse" genre is lovely to look at and may spark some interesting conversations with young readers.… (més)