THE RAINFOREST GREW ALL AROUND

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)