By Katherine Applegate
A two-hundred-year-old oak tree narrates the story of the new family next door, and the neighbor who wants them gone.
Red is a red oak, two hundred and sixteen years old, and the wishtree of the neighborhood: every spring, people tie their wishes to Red's branches. From that one spot Red has watched families come and go, keeps company with a crow named Bongo, and shelters a whole city of animals in the hollows. Then a new family moves in next door, and their daughter Samar, quiet and often on her own, ties on a wish for a friend. Soon after, someone carves a single word into Red's trunk, LEAVE, aimed at Samar's family, who are Muslim and newly arrived. Trees are not supposed to speak to people. But with a lonely girl on one side and that carved word on the other, Red decides that this once the rules can bend.
This is the gentlest way onto a serious shelf, a book that lets a group talk about prejudice and belonging without anyone getting frightened. Red's voice is so warm and funny, full of tree jokes and animal gossip, that the hard center, a family made to feel unwelcome, stays bearable and open for discussion. It's short and the chapters are tiny, so a whole club can finish it and still have room to talk, and the tree's-eye view gives children a fresh angle on questions they might dodge head-on: who gets to belong here, and what does a good neighbor actually do? Applegate wrote The One and Only Ivan, and this has the same trick of a big feeling in a small, kind package.