Annet Schaap and Philip Hopman
The Tree with the Ear
‘Something happened today in gym class.’ A little boy is bursting to tell the big news that’s bubbling away inside him, but no one has time to listen to him.
Annet Schaap has written a poetic story about the lack of attention that we have for one another, as a result of our busy lives. For this book, she dreamed up a tree that really does know how to listen. The illustrator Philip Hopman, who has sold over 350,000 books in the ‘Boer Boris’ picture book series, has created a setting based on Barcelona, in which the tree towers above everything else, vast in its sympathy. With brilliant lines and a flowing palette, he plants this imaginative story in a familiar world. This is a wonder- ful parable about our hectic society.