In the Piney Woods

Nothing lasts forever – in families or in the piney woods

Long before Ella was born, her grandpa, “strong and straight and singing,” built a little house at the edge of the piney woods. Once this house was roomy. Now it’s packed tight with Ella, and her family, and Grandpa, old now – his body “bent like the branches of the low pines.” Ella loves the secrets that Grandpa shows her in the woods: how the sticky cones of the dwarf pitch pines stay locked up tight, “waiting,” as Grandpa tells her, for the heat from a fire that will allow them to open and release their seeds. “Everything has its time,” says Grandpa.

This spirited picture book, with evocative watercolors that capture the depth of feeling between Ella and Grandpa, tells a powerful story that is as much a celebration of life as it is an honest, reassuring book about aging and death.

Roni Schotter’s picture books include Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street. She lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Kimberly Bulcken Root has illustrated many popular picture books. She lives in Quarryville, Pennsylvania.