The Tree and Me Read online

  DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Text and illustration copyright © 2019 by Deborah Zemke

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com

  Ebook ISBN 9780735229433

  CIP Data is available.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  This story was inspired by the campaign of Mrs. Schenker’s class at Grant School to save the oak tree outside their classroom window. It’s dedicated to all young authors, artists, and activists.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Introducing Emily

  Chapter 2: Introducing Emily for the Second Time

  Chapter 3: It’s All Bert’s Fault

  Chapter 4: I Won’t Let Go

  Chapter 5: I Won’t Let Go, Part 2

  Chapter 6: How to Save Emily

  Chapter 7: Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

  Chapter 8: Einstein’s Plan

  Chapter 9: Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, Part 2

  Chapter 10: I Am Emily

  Chapter 11: We Are Emily!

  The Poem That Saved Emily

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  INTRODUCING EMILY

  This is Emily, right outside my classroom window. She’s so big that I can’t fit her on one page.

  Yes, Emily is a tree! A giant tree! Look! There’s a bird sitting on one of her branches and two squirrels chasing each other around her giant trunk.

  This is me, Bea Garcia. I draw pictures of EVERYTHING.

  I drew all the pictures in the book you’re reading right now. Here’s Zippy, one of the squirrels who lives on Emily.

  See the skinny tail? That’s how I can tell it’s him.

  Here I am at the top of Emily!

  I WISH! I’m not really sitting high in Emily’s branches, but wouldn’t it be fun if I was? Sometimes I draw what I really see. Sometimes I draw what I wish I could see.

  Do you see Zippy waving at you?

  Imagine what I would see if I really were high in Emily’s branches. The whole world.

  Look! Way over there is Yvonne. She was my first best friend and lived right next door to me before she moved a million miles away to Australia.

  Over here is my house. That’s my mom and dad in the front yard. My mom draws pictures of houses, too. She’s an architect.

  In the backyard you can see my little brother, the Big Pest, throwing sticks for Sophie, the world’s smartest dog.

  I really do climb that crabapple tree in my yard. It’s so tiny compared to Emily! The only thing I can see from its branches is Bert’s yard next door. But let’s not talk about him.

  Here’s my school, Emily Dickinson Elementary.

  See that window? That’s Mrs. Grogan’s class. That’s where I would be sitting if I wasn’t up here in the tree.

  Ignore the monster waving at the window. That’s Bert.

  Look down there on the playground! My whole class is pointing up at me!

  Fall? I’m not going to fall.

  I’m going to FLY!

  This is me, really. I’m sitting in the front row of Mrs. Grogan’s class. I’m not high in Emily’s branches. I’m not flying.

  Everybody laughed except Judith Einstein, my new best friend and the smartest girl in the universe. That’s her sitting right next to me.

  If a man can be named Joyce then a tree can be named Emily.

  I was doing just what the poem said. I was looking at a tree. Unlike Bert, who was being a monster.

  Bert—excellent? Bert is a monster. He can’t be excellent, ever. Look at him. He calls me names.

  He scares my little brother and my dog, Sophie.

  He scares half the kids in Mrs. Grogan’s class.

  The other half thinks that he must be from another planet.

  Another half thinks that Bert is cool. I know that’s too many halves, but some kids think it’s cool to be from another planet.

  Bert’s own mom told me that Bert likes being a monster.

  That’s a fancy way of saying he loves monsters. My mom told me:

  But Bert is hard to ignore, especially because he lives next door in the house where my first best friend, Yvonne, lived before she moved to Australia. Remember the picture I drew of my house? Here’s Bert’s next door.

  There isn’t really a “Beware of Monster” sign in his front yard, but there should be.

  Bert took over Yvonne’s house and now he’s taken over this book, and I haven’t even told you why I named a tree Emily or how I saved her life.

  Right. Judith Einstein is always 100 percent right. So let’s start over.

  Chapter 2

  INTRODUCING EMILY FOR THE SECOND TIME

  This is Emily, right outside my classroom window. She’s so big I can’t fit her on one page.

  Here I am, chasing squirrels around Emily’s giant trunk!

  I WISH!

  Here I am, throwing acorns at Bert! He can’t see me!

  Now I’m flying high like a bird from the top of Emily!

  ALMOST.

  Here I really am, trying to write a short poem about a tall tree named Emily.

  But first I’m going to tell you why we named a tree Emily. It wasn’t just me. It was Einstein and me.

  Einstein is probably the only kid in school who knows that Emily Dickinson was a poet. Or knows one of her poems.

  I’m not sure what that means, but it makes me think of flying.

  Emily is the biggest tree on the playground. Every recess Einstein and I run to her. It’s our secret meeting place even though it’s right in plain view.

  The other kids race off to play four square or basketball or monster tag (and yes, you-know-who is always It).

  Einstein and I sit under Emily. Einstein reads while I draw pictures. Sometimes we talk.

  Sometimes we get up and chase each other around Emily like squirrels.

  Sometimes we play a game called Observe. Einstein always wins because she knows the names of everything.

  But that’s okay. I always win when we play Imagine. Here’s what I imagine we look like to a nuthatch!

  Sometimes squirrels throw acorns at us, especially Zippy.

  But Emily always watches over us. It’s like she’s a big umbrella that protects us from sun and snow and . . . you-know-who.

  At first we just called Emily the tree, but the didn’t fit because if you look really closely, you can see . . .

  a face! Do you see it?

  Einstein says it looks like Emily Dickinson the poet.

  Here I am, drawing a picture of Emily the Poet Tree.

  Mrs. Grogan looked at Einstein. She was always ready first. Except this time.

  Einstein still did
n’t raise her hand. She wasn’t writing a short poem. She was writing a long list of 103 Top Tree Facts.

  Tommy’s poem wasn’t even about trees.

  I liked Keisha’s poem. It made me think of Emily.

  You know I didn’t have a poem to share. You know that instead of writing a poem I was drawing a picture.

  Mrs. Grogan liked my picture.

  I guess my Poet Tree wasn’t quite the same as a poem because Mrs. Grogan gave me an A for imagination and a C for following directions.

  Bert got an A for everything. He’s never gotten an A for anything before. I think he should have gotten a big fat zero. And I think he should stop reciting his stupid poem.

  I asked Einstein what a gingko was. It didn’t sound like a tree, it sounded like some kind of lizard. I was wrong.

  You can imagine what Bert thought of that. He loves monsters, and dinosaurs are the nearest things to monsters that have ever actually existed. Then Einstein made it even worse.

  Sometimes I wish Einstein didn’t know everything. Sometimes that makes it hard to be her best friend. Especially when she says things that make Bert worse instead of just ignoring him.

  It’s impossible to ignore Bert. But we all should have tried because everything that happened was his fault.

  Chapter 3

  IT’S ALL BERT’S FAULT

  See? Here’s Bert up in the branches of Emily. I’m not playing Imagine. And Bert’s really not supposed to be there.

  He’s not all the way to the top. But he is high enough to look down at everyone on the playground. This is what we must look like to him. Mad.

  We aren’t mad at Bert because he climbed Emily. We’re mad because he’s throwing acorns at us like a silly squirrel.

  At first he was just throwing them at Einstein and me.

  *That’s Einstein’s way of saying Stop!

  *That’s Spanish for Stop! But Bert didn’t stop. When Keisha, Megan, Jackson, and Marcus ran over from playing four square to see what was happening, Bert threw acorns at them, too.

  Everybody else raced over to see what was going on.

  Bert threw acorns at all of them. Ben and Lauren picked up acorns and threw them back at Bert. The acorns bounced off Emily and hit Luis and Jacob, who picked up more acorns and threw them up at Bert. Soon everybody was throwing acorns.

  It was an acorn war!!

  Half the kids thought it was fun. The other half wished they could throw better.

  But Zippy and his friends were terrified. They started to hurl acorns, leaves, and twigs at Bert.

  Everybody down below laughed except Einstein and me.

  And Mrs. Grogan, who ran over from the swings. She was so mad it looked like there was smoke coming out of her ears.

  Everybody stopped, even Bert.

  Bert didn’t come down.

  Bert still didn’t come down.

  He tried.

  But . . .

  he couldn’t.

  Bert stopped.

  Principal Parker came running out of the school.

  Bert held on tight. We stayed back. We heard sirens in the distance, getting closer and closer.

  Suddenly, Fireman Dave roared right up on the playground in his big noisy truck.

  He was followed by KBOO-TV News.

  We watched as Fireman Dave rode high up toward Bert in the rescue bucket.

  Fireman Dave reached for Bert.

  Bert held tight.

  Bert didn’t let go.

  Bert let go.

  Fireman Dave held tight. Everybody cheered . . .

  as Fireman Dave brought Bert safely down.

  Everybody cheered but me.

  Fireman Dave should have left Bert up there. Because if Bert hadn’t thrown acorns at everybody then nobody would have noticed him.

  If nobody had noticed Bert we wouldn’t have had an acorn war, and Mrs. Grogan wouldn’t have run over to stop it.

  If Bert had come down when Mrs. Grogan yelled at him, then Principal Parker wouldn’t have called Fireman Dave.

  If Fireman Dave hadn’t rescued Bert, then we wouldn’t have been on TV and . . .

  Lauren Winkleblinker’s mother wouldn’t have called up everybody else’s parents.

  Timber??!!!

  My mom and dad told me . . .

  They were wrong.

  Chapter 4

  I WON’T LET GO

  The next day, just before we were about to go home, Mrs. Grogan told us the bad news. I mean she read the announcement.

  No one understood anything except . . .

  Einstein understood everything. She told me the bad news.

  Here I am running out of the class . . .

  out of the building . . .

  to the playground . . .

  where I spread my arms wide around Emily.

  I wasn’t going to ever let her go.

  Chapter 5

  I WON’T LET GO, PART 2

  The KBOO-TV news team came back, but I didn’t let go.

  Even though they made me seem silly I didn’t let go.

  Even though Fireman Dave didn’t come to rescue me, I didn’t let go.

  I didn’t let go when everybody waved on their way to the bus to go home or when the TV news team left.

  I almost let go when Einstein had to leave.

  Lying on top of all those acorns was really uncomfortable, but I didn’t let go. It was just me and Zippy and his friends.

  And my mom.

  And the Big Pest.

  And Mrs. Grogan. Did she want to save Emily, too?

  I let go. I stood tall.

  *Which means Let’s go home, in Spanish. On the way I tried to think of how to save Emily. I knew I couldn’t do it by myself. When we got home, my mom helped me call Einstein.

  Chapter 6

  HOW TO SAVE EMILY

  Here we are, Einstein and me, sitting in the crabapple tree in my backyard. It’s way smaller than Emily.

  Einstein knows everything about trees. Almost. I taught her how to climb up here.

  I used to play with my first best friend, Yvonne, in this tree. It didn’t seem little then, it seemed magical. Yvonne and I used to play Imagine only we didn’t call it that, we just called it playing.

  Sometimes we played that the tree was Mount Everest . . .

  or the Pacific Ocean . . .

  or a spaceship to Mars.

  But that was when Yvonne lived next door, before she moved to Australia and Bert moved in. See? Another thing that’s all his fault.

  Einstein and I aren’t playing anything. She’s reading her plan to save Emily. Remember that list of 103 Top Tree Facts that Einstein wrote instead of a poem? She rewrote it as 103 Reasons to Save Emily.

  I didn’t understand Reason #1. I didn’t understand how it could save Emily. Then Einstein told me.

  Emily was a magician!

  It sounded like magic to me. But was science the kind of magic that could save Emily? Einstein read Reason #2.

  I couldn’t imagine how candy that I wouldn’t want to eat could save Emily. I just kept imagining Emily . . . GONE.

  I drew Emily the magician in Einstein’s notebook. It was hard enough to draw sitting in a tree. Bert made it even harder.

  Ignore him. He isn’t really flying, he’s jumping on his trampoline.

  You can ignore my little brother, too. His real name is Pablo, but I call him the Big Pest because he really is one.

  I observed. Do you see it? The T-shirt!

  We all ran inside to make Save Emily T-shirts.

  I drew the picture. Einstein helped to draw 2 million leaves. I’m just kidding, it wasn’t that many.

  The Big Pest made this scribble. He said it was a leaf.

  Sophie helped, too. She brought us
her favorite part of any tree.

  My dad printed our picture on transfer paper, and we made three Save Emily T-shirts.

  But could T-shirts and a stick save Emily?