Description
Two of Australia’s most acclaimed and high profile writers co-author a sensitive and ultimately hopeful story about our growing climate crisis.
With sea-levels rising, and the land deforested, over-mined and affected by bushfires and drought – Tasmania is increasingly marooned, its people abandoned. Nyx’s father wants them to leave while they still can but, for Nyx, West Hobart is all she’s ever known, and where her mother is buried. She seeks solace in the single surviving tree near her home - an 80-foot pine that has defied all odds. Bea, too, finds solace in the tree, and facing a move to the mainland herself, leaves a despairing note, wedged into a hole in its trunk. Nyx finds the note, and writes back. But Nyx and Bea don’t realise how special their tree truly is …
Review
Nyx is a young girl who loves Tasmania and does not want to move. It is the place that she has a connection to her Mum, and her Dad just doesn’t understand her connection to the place she calls home. But the climate has changed, and they really don’t have any other option.
Bea also loves Tasmania, and her Dad also doesn’t realise what moving away means to her.
Although she doesn’t have an easy life at school, Bea is sure there will be mean girls wherever she goes, and this is her home and the place she loves.
Both girls love the tree that they find peace in, and it just happens to be the same tree.
They start leaving notes in the tree about what is happening in their lives, and their true feelings about their circumstances and the situations they are faced with.
But things don’t quite add up. They never encounter each other at the tree, and some things in their letters don’t make sense. Can they decipher what is really going on, in order to save the place they both love?
Told through alternating voices of both Nyx and Bea, this is a story of friendship, climate change and having the courage to make a difference.
It will be enjoyed by those in middle to upper primary.
Reviewd by Sam
