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There Was a Tree


There was a Tree
by Rachel Isadora
Penguin, 2012.  Unpaged.  Picture book.

     Rachel Isadora's variation on   "And the Green Grass Grew All Around" sets the old children's song in Africa where it adapts very well. Zebra, wildebeest, giraffes, and elephants roam the greenly grassy savannahs with the orange, basketball-sized sun floating in a sky burned white, while brightly-colored birds lay and hatch out eggs "on the branches on the tree, and the tree in the hole, and the hole in the ground. Small boxed rebuses are slotted into the text, adding visual fun to this cumulative/predictable favorite.

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