Modeling her text on the folk version of “And the Green Grass Grew All Around” (rather than William Jerome’s lurid ballad of the same name), Mitchell tours a tall kapok tree, pointing out for each cumulative verse a cat, a snake, an ant, a frog or other floral or faunal resident of its ecosystem. Sidebar notes identify each subject as a jaguar, an emerald tree boa and so forth, adding a line or two of further detail, and McLennan furnishes lush, colorful, nearly page-filling close ups of each, painted in reasonably exact detail. There’s no musical arrangement—but the author does append a recipe for “Rainforest cookies,” along with a pair of simple matching games. A lighter, less message-driven alternative to Lynne Cherry’s classroom standby, Great Kapok Tree (1990). (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-8)
