Stay, Little Seed

An anthropomorphized tree sits atop a hill, above a “beautiful meadow” (we have to take the text’s word for it as neither the hill nor the meadow are depicted in the illustrations here). Its seeds let go of their branches and fly into the wind, scattering to their unknown final destinations, ready to find a spot of earth and grow into trees themselves. One seed, however, remains. At first, the tree encourages it to go. But when the seed refuses to depart, the tree decides the seed can stay. The story progresses from this point as a series of “reasons” that the tree should postpone the seed’s departure for another day (it’s raining, it’s too sunny, it’s too windy). ‘“Just one more day...just one more day...just one more day!” says the tree. Eventually, a magpie snatches the seed in its beak, and the seed is lost to the tree. The tree continues to worry about that one specific seed, though “...seasons passed and other seeds came and left”. One day, the tree hears a voice saying, “Hello? Hello?”, and we find that the seed has now grown into a sapling nearby, and the parent tree rejoices.

I’m not entirely sure what to think about Stay, Little Seed. It is, of course, a story about the fear of letting go of something or someone we love. Perhaps it is unfair that I came upon this book as a reader very much interested in trees and their stories. I had recently finished reading the adult nonfiction book, The Secret Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, as well as the children’s nonfiction book, Tree Beings by Raymond Huber and Sandra Severgnini (forward by Jane Goodall). Both of these books are wonderful, and so the bar for books about trees was high (in my heart and mind, as well as in the recent history of publishing). “But Andrea,” (you say), “Stay, Little Seed is a picture book, made for young children”. Is it, though? Of course. It’s not about trees at all; it’s a metaphor for a parent not being able to let go of their child as they go out into the wide world. Herein lies the problem (for me, at least). Attributing human characteristics to trees - in this case - does the trees a disservice. Trees are ancient beings. I do believe trees probably have some kind of consciousness that we are unaware of or that we, more likely, are simply unable to understand or fathom. Trees, recent science has discovered, “talk” or “communicate” with each other. Trees fruit and seed for years - sometimes hundreds of years. Indeed, some trees are thousands of years old. One would imagine they do not experience time the way humans do (if, indeed, we can say they “experience” time at all). At the end of the day, I simply could not suspend my disbelief to entertain the fact that a tree could have a hard time letting go of their seed. Trees do not have human hangups about loneliness, fearing for the fate of their seeds, worrying about their seeds getting a “sunburn”, needing boots, or getting wet in the rain (surely, water and sun help seeds grow??) - these are all excuses the tree thinks up to keep their offspring from leaving. I know it’s all supposed to be cute, silly, and moving. Personally, though, I wouldn’t want to read this book to my child. I wouldn’t want them to think of trees as worrywarts who fret about healthy life cycle processes. I feel like a killjoy for saying this, but there it is. We have read great metaphorical stories of trees before (Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree – a tale about humanity’s endless and selfish abuses of our eternally generous Mother Earth - comes to mind), but this one fell short for me.

I also can’t help but think this story might have been better told if birds were the central characters being anthropomorphized here (giving your kids “wings to fly”, “empty nest” syndrome, and all that). There is even one page that depicts the seed cradled in a birds’ nest among the branches, with the birds (whose home the nest assuredly is) nonchalantly displaced and the parent plant looking worriedly on. The book seems to ignore the fact that a bird is later portrayed as the key villain when it tries to eat the seed (which, in actuality, would only assure the tree’s progeny’s life through distribution of said bird’s droppings). Maybe the bird thing has been overdone, I don’t know.

The publisher, Greystone Kids (a division of Greystone Books), connects this book to curriculum themes of “family / emotions and feelings / seasons / nature”. Family and emotions - yes, but I would under no circumstances teach this alongside a discussion of nature or seasons. At the end of the day, I just feel that, in today’s political and ecological climate, knowledge about and understanding of our tree relatives is so crucial; if I’m going to read a book about trees to a child, I want it to be in reverence of trees, their incredible functions, and their ancient, innate wisdom. A book about trees can be sweet and whimsical, sure - but I also want it to be enlightening, inspiring, and true. I want it to make sense, at least to this ‘tender heart’.

A note on the illustrations. Philip Giordano usually creates gorgeous, bold, brightly coloured graphic illustrations, bursting with life, imagination, and whimsy bordering on the psychedelic. In Stay, Little Seed, the background is a drab manila, and the illustrations are simple, delicate black line drawings, with select objects in muted colours (certain animals that live in the tree, items of clothing, hearts). I’m not sure children would be interested in the colour scheme or minimalism of these drawings (this coming from a person whose personal aesthetic is staunch minimalism). The word that comes to mind is scant, rather than deliberately economical or meaningful. There isn’t much colour, and there also isn’t much contrast. The seeds are cute, I guess. Like the tree, they have humanoid noses (as does the personified wind who makes a few appearances).

At the point of the story when the seed grows into “a sapling” (as described in the text), it is depicted nevertheless in the illustration as a mature tree with a large crown of leaves, which seems a discrepancy someone should have caught. The tree and the “sapling” are portrayed with speech bubbles extended toward each other with hearts inside. The hearts in the speech bubbles look like seeds (not the way the seeds in the story, nor the heart on the cover of the book look, mind you, but more like real seeds - think: butts). The heart that the sapling has in its speech bubble has a slightly lighter box around it that looks like a cropping mistake not taken care of in the digital editing process.

At the end, we are left with the conclusion, “Who Knows Where wasn’t so far away… And the tiny seed hadn’t needed a hat or clothes or boots after all. It had made a safe journey, all by itself”. Well, a tree could have told you that.