An immersive wordless picture book follows the development and subsequent devastation of a civilization surrounding a tree growing at the bend of a river. As the story opens, a family builds a house and livestock enclosure. Soon a small community springs up, complete with fortified castle, river dam, and nearby thatched-roof structures. The town thrives, then falls into disrepair before industrialization revives it. Steam engines, flying machines, and then cars and electricity enter the picture. The formerly small, rural town is now a bustling city, the landscape laden with skyscrapers, neon lights, and elevated highways. The river has become a canal. The tree has grown to a magnificent size and reached the end of its long life; it stands barren on the only small patch of grass remaining. The next page turn marks a devastating change: The landscape has frozen over and flooded; all but the top of the tree is submerged. Buildings have crumbled. Humans live on houseboats. When the floodwaters recede, all that remains is mud and ruins. But on a branch reaching out of the gnarled old tree trunk, a few leaves and an acorn grow. The appearance of a sapling, a deer, and two children foretell a revival of the land, and perhaps of the community, on the final, tentatively hopeful pages of a thought-provoking saga of humanity and the environment. (Ages 4-9)

A spectacular time-lapse portrait of humankind—and our impact on the natural world—from a Caldecott Honor–winning master of the wordless form

In an alternate past—or possible future—a mighty tree stands on the banks of a winding river, bearing silent witness to the flow of time and change. A family farms the fertile valley. Soon, a village sprouts, and not long after, a town. Residents learn to harness the water, the wind, and the animals in order to survive and thrive. The growing population becomes ever more industrious and clever, bending nature itself to their will and their ambition: redirecting rivers, harvesting lumber, reshaping the land, even extending daylight itself. . . .

The Tree and the River is an epic time-lapse reimagining of human civilization from a master of the wordless form, and a thought-provoking meditation on the relationship between two mighty forces: nature and humankind.