Ava and the Acorn

‘Time tick-tocks by and change comes to us all.’ This is a book about the wonders of change, seen by little Ava and her grandad as they watch the seasons from under an old oak tree. The tree and the surrounding country are beautifully represented – light slanting through the autumnal colours as the wind pulls leaves from the oak provides the illustrator, Paddy Donnelly, with an excellent opportunity to play with light and shade, and one he returns to a number of times.  The tree in winter, too, is atmospheric and indicative of a change in mood as grandad falls ill, allowing the returning green and the white buds to be rightfully a cause of joy to Ava. The summer picnic – and the inventive illustration of it from up in the oak’s branches – would make any reader long for the summer.

There is certainly lots to delight here, but perhaps the author and illustrator are trying to do too much at times. The way that grandad’s care is played down to an adult hand on Ava’s head and lines on ‘footsteps and noise’ is clever, a real attempt to show Ava sidelined as grandad declines, although I am not sure why grandad has to have an illness over the winter; why do we need to emphasise his frailty? I am unsure, too, why the oak tree (often famous for its longevity) has to die, to ‘slip away to the past,’ when nothing is made of the (perhaps inevitable) passing of grandad at some point in the future.  In terms of style, I also have to admit that I found Lu Fraser’s rhymes and the tetrameter rhythm sometimes a little contrived, for example when we read of the ‘wonderful things/Which the twisting path over the hill surely brings’.

I can see this being a worthwhile resource book to be shared on a Forest School outing to an oak wood, or on the occasion of the planting of an oak in school grounds; it might fit well, too, in a topic about seasons.