The Tallest Tree House

PreS-Gr 1-Competition becomes cooperation when the tallest tree house isn't the winner in this formulaic tale about two tiny fairies engaged in a building contest. Mip, the instigator of the competition, looks rather like the main character of MacKay's Beach Baby. She's simply sketched, barefoot, and wearing a peach-toned jumpsuit with two pompoms on its front. Her prominent feature is an enormous red mushroom, all spotted in beige, snugly encasing her head. Her gauzy wings are often hardly visible. One day, Mip encounters her best friend Pip, who is reading a book on architecture. Excited by the idea of building something, Mip throws out the tree house challenge. "Whoever makes the best tree house by sundown wins!" Pip is a more cautions sort. He's dressed in green with a long bud on his head—no doubt related to his name. He has flowing leaf-shaped wings and boots on his feet. While Mip sets about chopping and whacking and sticking up a tall tower, he works on sketching his building plan. The art is a fine blend of collage and painting on beautifully shaded pages. There are fun details to discover in the pictures that are not mentioned in the text. The contest runs into an afternoon thunderstorm, tumbling Mip's tower and leaving Pip with a stuck wing. The two friends are first of all concerned about one another. Once Mip frees Pip they wait out the storm. Then "with Mip's vision and imagination and Pip's careful planning they came up with a new set of blueprints in no time." There's a bit of an audience problem here. The architecture and tree house ideas will be mope meaningful to slightly older readers. The very young looking characters and simple narrative seem more like kindergarten and late preschool stuff. Still, MacKay has gained fans with earlier books, and the explicit lessons about friendship will be appreciated by parents and teachers.