Katie tells her little sister Rosie who just swallowed an apple seed that it will grow into a tree. Over the following days Katie looks in her Rosie’s ears and tells her she can see branches of the tree growing, she also predicts that eventually the branches will grow large. Rosie becomes worried because it will be hard for her to get through doorways and play games with her friends. Her imagination is vivid and troubling.

Katie comforts her little sister by explaining all the benefits of having an apple tree growing out of one’s head. Rosie will have all the apples she wanted, and she will always have a shady spot to sit in under the sun. Her friends will be able to climb her and they could decorate her branches on special days. This makes Rosie feel better.

Rosie asks her friend to check the progress of the tree growing inside her, but her friend can’t see anything. Rosie then gets upset with Katie for lying to her and making her worry so much. Katie tells her she should not always believe what she is told, but makes her little sister feel better by telling her a story about a girl who has an apple tree growing out of her ears. Rosie is soon sleeping happily.

The book is illustrated with watercolors which add a soft dreamy quality to the book. It also feels a little old fashioned. The story itself is odd: some children may find it funny, while others may find it silly or bizarre. Obviously What’s So Terrible… features sibling relationships, truth telling, and the pleasures and dangers of fantasies.

My first reaction to browsing through the book was unenthusiastic, but on reflection I found a richness to the theme of a tree growing in one’s body. A child’s awareness and fantasies about his or her body is of course central to psychoanalytic speculation about the formation of the psyche, and some parents could enjoy this book simply for that reason. But more readers may simply find that the story strikes a chord in them, in that it is both fun and disturbing to consider one’s body being taken over by a tree. An adult who believed this would be diagnosed as having a paranoid delusion, but of course such fantasies aren’t unusual for children. Some people may think it inappropriate to encourage fantasies like this, but it’s likely that children are going to let their imaginations run wild whatever they are told, and a book like this could help in giving them ways to tell fantasy from reality.

Categories: Fiction