Paper Chase

K-Gr 4–When Ginger’s (she has yellow hair and pink skin) paper airplane crashes into James’s (he has black hair and brown skin) book beneath the tallest tree in the wood, a fast friendship is formed. Just as quickly, they are separated, and when Ginger returns days later to the same spot to look for James, she discovers the tree being harvested and hauled away. The story initially appears poised to become a lament for losing one of nature’s gentle giants but instead pivots into a practical lesson on renewable resource management. The tree is stripped, chipped, and rolled into paper products, including newspapers, shoeboxes, shopping bags, toilet paper, and, eventually, a book for Ginger and a notepad for James. Those, in turn, become another paper airplane and book that collide to bring about the friends’ reunion. The illustrations adequately support the text, rendered in a simple, accessible style. Some children will require a brief lesson on Britishisms (“lorry” for truck, “loo” for bathroom). Although intended as a full-circle narrative, the story reads more like three quasi-connected segments than a fully integrated whole.