Shake the Tree!

PreS-Gr 1—This interactive, participatory picture book opens on a vertical spread to show the distance between a hungry mouse and a delicious-looking nut sitting high up in a tree. The mouse and the reader shake the tree left and right in an attempt to jiggle the nut loose from the branches above. Quite unexpectedly to the mouse and to readers, a hungry fox thumps to the ground declaring it will gobble up the mouse. The mouse flees up the tree, while the fox and the reader shake the tree left and right until down drops another predator: a warthog who wants to gobble up the fox. The book continues in this manner until a series of once-hungry, now fleeing animals are up in the tree and an angry bear is shaking the tree's trunk frantically. In the book's final pages, the bear stares hungrily at everything (and everyone) that's fallen from the tree, with an exposed, leafless tree towering above the scene. In a surprise ending, all of the animals are left stunned, and the readers—in certain laughter. Overall, this work feels like a comedic mash-up of the style and themes prevalent in Christie Matheson's Tap the Magic Tree and Joe Kulka's Wolf's Coming!