Boat in the Tree

The day Mom and Dad went to pick up my new brother, Simón, I built a raft and set sail for Bongadongo. I told Simón that he couldn't come with me, but little brothers can be dumb. I got a ship in a bottle from Grandpa and saved my allowance to make a whole fleet of model ships, and I even found a real boat that I patched up with chewing gum and that almost floated! Of course, Simón pestered me all along. Finally, I couldn't take it any more and I ran away from home, looking for any ship to sail away on. But then a windstorm blew me back home, and Simón pointed me to a boat that got stuck in a tree. Together we pulled the boat from the tree and launched it, but I wouldn't let Simón come with me—not without a life jacket.

Tim Wynne-Jones creates a fantastical story of how sibling rivalry develops when a family adopts a new brother. John Shelley's illustrations display the boy's wonder-filled worlds—one grounded in reality, the other in the boy's elaborate imagination—and how the boy accepts his new brother from one world into the other.

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