posted on 01 Sep 2019

The Pirate Tree by Brigita Orel and Jenny Poh

Another visually terrific production from Lantana Publishing brings together linguist and creative writing student, Brigita Orel and freelance illustrator, Jenny Poh to tell the deceptively simple tale of The Pirate Tree.

With a cast of just two characters – Sam and Agu – Orel spins a meaningful tale of how shared imagination can bridge divides and help bring people together in friendship.

On a gnarled old tree that Sam has imagined as her pirate ship she can pretend she is a fearless captain of the vessel ‘sailing the warm south seas’. When Agu turns up one day and asks to play too, Sam initially rebuffs him and Agu is left forlorn:

“Agu’s face falls. He watches her struggle with a thick rope. No one wants to play with him because he’s a newcomer.”

But, step by step, inch by inch, the two children get to know each other and discover that there’s stuff to share. Sam finds out that Agu actually knows about exotic far-away places like Nigeria – because that’s where he used to live. Now she wants to find out what else he knows and so soon the two of them are on board the Pirate Tree, sharing their adventures together.

A friendship is formed and the final frame of the book – a double page spread – is seem from the viewpoint of the tree rather than the children:

“Its boughs sigh in the zephyr, waiting for the day it will turn into a pirate ship once again and sail the distant seas with the two new friends.”

It’s a lightly told, touching little story that children will immediately be able to recognise and which gives up its moral easily enough for them to grasp without the need for adult intervention – although I bet there will be plenty of parents who will enjoy putting on the obligatory pirate accent when they read it out loud.

As with all the Lantana books, this is a nice big generous size and the quality of the paper and overall production values are tremendous. All this allows the excellent illustrations plenty of space to glow and breath. What I especially like is the way the use of colour isn’t allowed to crowd out the white of the page and this gives the drawings a sense of bigness that seems entirely appropriate to the subject of unbounded imagination.

Published in early September 2019, if you can’t find it in your local bookshop, log on to the Lantana website and order your copy from there.

Terry Potter

September 2019

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