As a modern-day Alice of sorts, Mary Margaret enters her wonderland from the base of a tree. But here she contends with none of the unpleasant ambiguities of Carroll’s fantasy realm; instead, her adventure is nature-oriented and reassuringly benign. Mary Margaret’s flight of imagination takes off on a spring day, just as she has finished planting a tree. She finds herself shrinking to a fraction of her proper size and, at the same time, notices her sapling growing rapidly into a full-sized tree. She climbs to an uppermost branch and from there begins to keep company with the animals. From spring through autumn she lives with the birds and insects; when winter begins she retreats to a cave with a crew of snaggle-toothed but kindly-looking mammals. The completion of the seasonal cycle brings about the last and most dramatic metamorphosis for Mary Margaret, and then she is called back to the primary realm.

Drawson is a Toronto-based artist with an international reputation for magazine illustration. In Mary Margaret’s Tree, he has combined the best of his previous children’s illustrations: it has the good humour of Do Something Special on Your Birthday and the elaborate skyscapes of Flying Dimitri. In addition to offering a bird’s-eye view of tree-life, Drawson’s story provides a decorative introduction to nature’s diurnal and seasonal cycles. His writing is plain but serviceable, and succeeds in pointing up the real focus of the book: its illustrations. These span at least half of every spread and display a panoply of rich, warm-toned colours. Young children will enjoy the copious detail in each frame, particularly the summertime scene amidst the turquoise sky or the markings on the woodpecker that peers down upon the miniature heroine. Considering the gentle tone of the story and the relative simplicity of its plot, the recommended age range of 3 to 6 years seems most appropriate for this book.