Snowboy and the Last Tree Standing - OPTIONAL

Snowboy and the Last Tree Standing by Hiawyn Oram, illustrated by Birgitta Sif.  PICTURE BOOK  Candlewick Press, 2017.  $17.  9780763695729  

BUYING ADVISORY: EL (K-3) – OPTIONAL  

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE  

One day Snowboy and his friends are playing in the forest, when along comes Greenbackboy.  Greenbackboy talks Snowboy into playing a game called Ka-ching in which if you chop all the trees down in the forest you get a treasure box full of gold coins.  As they are chopping down the trees, Snowboy decides to leave one tree to grow.  After they do the same to the fish in the ocean, Snowboy leaves a couple of fish there as well.  When a big storm comes up and takes all of their treasure, Snowboy helps Greenbackboy see that the trees and fish matter more than Ka-ching.  

The moral of the story, to protect our environment, is expressed very clearly.  The illustrations are a bit dark and dreary and I’m unclear what the polar bear and pig characters were doing in most of the drawings.  I want to like this book, but the question I keep going back to is: why did Snowboy go along with cutting all the trees and killing all the fish in the first place?  

C. Peterson