The Tree in the Courtyard by Jeff Gottesfeld Review by Andrea Vollmer

For a young picture book reader, The Tree in the Courtyard is a simple story of a horse chestnut tree that sits in the middle of a courtyard and observes the events of a family (and a few others) during a time of war. The family arrives the first winter of the war, and a spunky young girl plays around the chestnut and writes at the kitchen table. In the middle of summer, the girl stops playing outside. The tree can only catch glimpses of her in the factory annex, filling the pages of a red and white diary.

The girl becomes pale and thin as bombs drop nearby, and the tree worries about her. One day, cars come and take the family away. Her pages of writing scatter. The tree keeps a vigil. The war ends, but only the father returns. In time, other children come to visit the annex to see what the girl saw, to sit where she sat.

The author’s descriptions of this historic event are at once lyrical and abbreviated, beautiful and sad. A young reader will feel the concern the tree has for the little girl, while older readers and adults will recognize the story of Anne Frank and feel a strong tug on their heartstrings. At one particularly poignant moment, many people come to try to save the tree—giving it medicine, building a steel support, and collecting its seedpods— and the tree reflects on how “few had tried to save the little girl.”

In the end, there is a sense of hope as readers learn that saplings from the tree in the courtyard have been planted in eleven locations in the U.S. “notable for their quest for freedom and tolerance.” Among them is the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York, New York, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the Holocaust & Genocide Memorial Grove at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California.