Before We Stood Tall: From Small Seed to Mighty Tree

Before We Stood Tall: From Small Seed to Mighty Tree is an art book, a poetry book, and a science book for young readers. It is unique, but not in a gimmicky or quirky way. It is a most gentle and loving ode to all the trees that have ever lived and all those yet to sprout from a small seed.

We are used to discussing life cycles in the natural world, starting with a birth and proceeding through reproduction to death. Author Jessica Kulekjian begins this book by looking back at the previous stages of growth and generations of trees that supported the tree storyteller that is now narrating the book. Without explicitly saying it, this narrator is clear that it and all trees are one. That one tree could not exist without the others that have nurtured past generations, and the ones that now nurture this generation and will nurture future generations.

Before our seed coats burst open …
We nestled beneath our fallen leaves.
Before our seeds tucked in and waited …
We greeted the ground,
sinking into its inviting hug.

Illustrator Madeline Kloepper’s artwork elevates the scientific concepts and poetic text to an even higher level. The publication information says that the artwork is “rendered in watercolor, gouache, colored pencil and finished digitally”. Using a pallet of spring and fall colours, Kloepper includes identifiable plant and animal wildlife, such as sugar maples, white birch, bears, deer, foxes, caterpillars, walking sticks, box turtles, jays, woodpeckers, salamanders, and many others.

At the end of the story, the author includes three pages of notes beginning with an explanation of the recent scientific work of Dr. Suzanne Simard, “one of the world’s first scientists working to discover how trees communicate”. This is followed by information on the “Layers of the Forest”, “Odds of Success”, and specific “Wildlife” that make their homes in North American hardwood forests. In case you are wondering, sugar maples begin producing seeds when they are about thirty years old and will produce more than a million trees in their lifetime, but only one of those seeds is likely to successfully grow into a mature tree.

Before We Stood Tall: From Small Seed to Mighty Tree is a treasure. Its unique presentation will appeal to those who are already nature lovers and may spark that magic moment when a not-yet nature lover looks up with wonder.