TEN TALL OAKTREES

From a Scottish author, an environmental/historical countdown, beginning with a scene in Tudor Britain: ``Ten tall oaktrees/Standing in a line,/`Warships,' cried King Henry,/Then there were nine.'' In the 18th century, one tree goes for charcoal; lightning, firewood, barrels, and the wind account for others, with the last succumbing, in this century, to a builder, a council (``unsafe''), ``progress'' (a highway), and a farmer (though why he finds the last tree a ``nuisance'' in a field of sheep remains a mystery). It's a clever idea, neatly phrased in verse but imperfectly developed in the rather ordinary illustrations, where the changing periods and activities are indicated competently enough but the trees never age or grow in 400 years. (Picture book. 4-8)