The Tree With Many Colors

This is Fred’s first children’s book (for ages 9 to 100). It came about because an artist friend, who used to work with young children, told Fred she loved one of his digital art pictures of a colorful tree. She felt this picture and some others he had done could be used to create a wonderful storybook for children. Fred came up with the book title and started writing the story with hardly anything in mind at first... it just began with the ‘tree’ and one other picture, which he used for one of the main characters. The story quickly flowed out from him and was completed in little more than a week. Fred just kept thinking to himself, “This is crazy.” Being a musician his whole life and having just retired, he wondered why he was writing a book for children. But this is not just for children. There’s a universal message here for everyone. It’s about ‘giving and receiving love’ - the purpose of life! Nine year-old Hugh has an amazing adventure meeting an ancient friend from the past who teaches him some lessons about love, tells an incredible tale about their ancestors, and shares memories of when they were together in a time long forgotten. It all begins with the ‘tree’... This book contains both fiction and simple truths. It has something the world can use right now. It can open your heart and bring out the ‘child’ in you, regardless of your age! Regarding his art for this book, Fred says: “Whatever you can imagine already exists somewhere!” Here’s some comments about Fred’s book: “Out of this world pictures.” “It breaks boundaries...” “Beyond your bridled imagination.” “It lets you see things from another part of the world, dimension, or existence.” “Helps show you how important love is, in so many ways.”

“An anthology of nature writing by people of color, providing deeply personal connections to—or disconnects from—nature.” —NPR From African American to Asian American, indigenous to immigrant, “multiracial” to “mixed-blood,” the diversity of cultures in this world is matched only by the diversity of stories explaining our cultural origins: stories of creation and destruction, displacement and heartbreak, hope and mystery. With writing from Jamaica Kincaid on the fallacies of national myths, Yusef Komunyakaa connecting the toxic legacy of his hometown, Bogalusa, LA, to a blind faith in capitalism, and bell hooks relating the quashing of multiculturalism to the destruction of nature that is considered “unpredictable”—among more than thirty-five other examinations of the relationship between culture and nature—this collection points toward the trouble of ignoring our cultural heritage, but also reveals how opening our eyes and our minds might provide a more livable future. Contributors: Elmaz Abinader, Faith Adiele, Francisco X. Alarcón, Fred Arroyo, Kimberly Blaeser, Joseph Bruchac, Robert D. Bullard, Debra Kang Dean, Camille Dungy, Nikky Finney, Ray Gonzalez, Kimiko Hahn, bell hooks, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Pualani Kanaka’ole Kanahele, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Jamaica Kincaid, Yusef Komunyakaa, J. Drew Lanham, David Mas Masumoto, Maria Melendez, Thyllias Moss, Gary Paul Nabhan, Nalini Nadkarni, Melissa Nelson, Jennifer Oladipo, Louis Owens, Enrique Salmon, Aileen Suzara, A. J. Verdelle, Gerald Vizenor, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Al Young, Ofelia Zepeda “This notable anthology assembles thinkers and writers with firsthand experience or insight on how economic and racial inequalities affect a person’s understanding of nature . . . an illuminating read.” —Bloomsbury Review “[An] unprecedented and invaluable collection.” —Booklist

It all started with Nathanael Johnson’s decision to teach his daughter the name of every tree they passed on their walk to day care in San Francisco. This project turned into a quest to discover the secrets of the neighborhood’s flora and fauna, and yielded more than names and trivia: Johnson developed a relationship with his nonhuman neighbors. Johnson argues that learning to see the world afresh, like a child, shifts the way we think about nature: Instead of something distant and abstract, nature becomes real—all at once comical, annoying, and beautiful. This shift can add tremendous value to our lives, and it might just be the first step in saving the world. No matter where we live—city, country, oceanside, or mountains—there are wonders that we walk past every day. Unseen City widens the pinhole of our perspective by allowing us to view the world from the high-altitude eyes of a turkey vulture and the distinctly low-altitude eyes of a snail. The narrative allows us to eavesdrop on the comically frenetic life of a squirrel and peer deep into the past with a ginkgo biloba tree. Each of these organisms has something unique to tell us about our neighborhoods and, chapter by chapter, Unseen City takes us on a journey that is part nature lesson and part love letter to the world’s urban jungles. With the right perspective, a walk to the subway can be every bit as entrancing as a walk through a national park.