The Miracle Tree - Softcover

Christobel Mattingley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 034037604X ISBN 13: 9780340376041

Publisher: Hodder Headline Australia Children's Books, 1986

Synopsis

After twenty years, Hanako, a victim of Nagasaki, is reunited at Christmas time with her mother and husband, because of a special pine tree

About this title

From School Library Journal

Grade 4 Up A sophisticated story that will have extremely limited appeal to children. Layered with meaning, rich with analogies, three successive stories relate and intertwine in this subtle plea for peace. Taro, a Japanese gardener, went off to war, leaving his bride, Hanako, who had married him without her mother's permission. She survived the devastation of the atomic bomb, but was physically and mentally shattered. On Christmas Day (although less than one per cent of the Japanese people follow Christianity), Taro, in an effort to make a more beautiful world, planted a pine seedling near a ruined church; Hanako's mother labored in the rebuilding of the shrine. Unknown to both of them, they were watched from a window across the street by the woman they both loved, a woman who no longer knew her identity and who was now known as Shizuka. Twenty years passedTaro faithfully tending the pine; the old woman still making pilgrimages to the church; Shizuka writing poetry. Feeling her end drawing near, Shizuka longed for Christmas Day when she knew she would see the two one more time. The miracle each had waited for came. The family was reunited. Smudgy, moody black-and-white illustrations deepen the symbolism with small details of pine boughs in green decorating portraits of the three and separating their stories. A moving story for adults, but not a picture book for children. Virginia Opocensky, Lincoln City Libraries, Nebr.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hodder Headline Australia Children's Books
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 034037604X
• ISBN 13: 9780340376041
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 36
• Illustrator: Marianne Yamaguchi