I HAVE AN OLIVE TREE

Both language and image are gorgeous in this affecting story of generations from Bunting (Some Frog!, 1998, etc.) and Barbour. When Sophia is seven, her grandfather gives her the olive tree that lives on the land their family once owned on a tiny island in faraway Greece. The next year, just before he dies, he gives Sophia the honey-colored beads that were her grandmother’s, and asks her to hang them in her olive tree. Sophia and her mother make the journey from California to Greece, and then to the island, and Sophia describes what she sees and hears, e.g., her mother, reading aloud the names of the Greek shops “as if she liked the sound of them in her mouth”; sheep that bleat just like American sheep; the sound of the bouzouki playing. Bunting makes the strangeness of the journey and Sophia’s growing understanding of her family history palpable, and Sophia’s feelings when she places the beads in the ancient tree are complex but clear in a way that children will understand. The colors and shapes owe something to Chagall, and the sun-drenched blues and yellows, purples and violets recall Mediterranean folk pottery in the intensity of the color and the abstract, gestural line. The double-page opening of Sophia and her mother before the olive tree vibrates with emotion—a passionate marriage of word and text. (Picture book. 4-10)