‘The Last Tree’ tells ecological fable about hope

The Last Tree

Written and illustrated by Emily Haworth-Booth

Pavilion Books Company Limited, London, 2021

“The Last Tree” is an ecological fable for children.  The story begins when a group of friends look for a place to live and settle in a forest.

They’re happy playing among the trees and sleeping on the mossy ground until winter comes. They cut down branches for firewood.

They need more protection from the weather so they chop down trees to build shelters. When their shelters aren’t warm enough, they chop down more trees to build cabins.

“Soon it seemed the more wood they took, the more they needed to take,” writes Haworth-Booth.

When summer returned, the sun was hot but there weren’t enough trees for shade. The people cut down more branches to make porches.

When the fall winds came, there were no trees to stop it.  The people decided to cut down the rest of the trees and build a wall. They left one scrawny tree standing because they thought it was worthless.

With nothing to look at but a wall, the villagers changed. They forgot their games and songs, and became cold and hard. They became suspicious of one another.

All the parents asked their children to cut down the last scrawny tree before anyone else could.

But when the children crept out beyond the wall and found one another by the little tree, they laughed and played. They tended the tree, and each day it grew taller and prouder.

The children talked to their parents about the tree and how it made them feel, but their parents wouldn’t listen. To satisfy their parents’ desire for more wood, the children secretly cut down boards from the wall and brought them to their parents.

They boarded up their windows and built fences, but when the wind rushed into the village, the people ran outside and saw that in spite of all their new wood, the last tree still stood.

When they heard their children playing by the tree and saw how the cool wind twisted gently though the tree’s branches, they remembered how things used to be. Suddenly, they understood what they had done wrong and decided to try to begin again.

They took the wall down, planted seeds and tended the saplings. They talked and sang, and as their children grew, a new forest grew with them.

The story ends, “And the last tree became the first.”

The simple brown, green, and blue drawings complement the story, and give it an old fashioned, classic feel.

About the Author-Illustrator

Emily Haworth-Booth is an award-winning author, illustrator, and educator who teaches at the Royal Drawing School in London. In addition to her children’s picture books, Emily is working on a graphic memoir. Her short comics have appeared in print in the “Observer” and “Vogue.” She is a passionate environmentalist.