So much to love about this Oliver Jeffers book! It is filled with little "clues" that young readers can use for drawing their own inferences. I think this book could have been almost wordless and worked almost as well. I'd like to try it as a "read the pictures" experience with the kindergarteners...and the animals on the OJ-style stick legs just made me giggle.We do have one hanging question for the great Oliver Jeffers: Who threw the airplane? Animals in this story sense a change in the life of the forest when trees suddenly start loosing branches, when whole tree trunks disappear and homes are lost. The only way to find out is by launching a full investigation which leads them to a bear who is found to be the culprit. The bear is taken to the police station and questioned. The bear confesses and the reason for him stealing the trees is because his dream is to win the paper aeroplane competition as bear generations had before him. In order to make up for what he did, he plants seeds to replace all the trees he cut. At the end, the animals in the story help reusing his many prototypes to build a winning paper aeroplane. I liked this book because the illustrations were quite engaging including thought bubbles of the characters and also the clues seen on each page leading up to the culprit. This book is great for Key stage one and lower key stage two for teaching topics such as recycling of paper and looking at ways to save forests.
Really cute, but not storytime material...
—dcwboy1
I love, love, love the illustrations!
—DeeDee
Hilarious!Earth DayArbor Day
—vrenner24
Didn't work for me.
—ngov387
