Genre and Style
Tree is a popular science book, intended to profile the life of single tree using terminology targeted at a general audience. The narrative provides ecological context, describing animals and plants that interact with the tree, as well as historical context. Parallels to the tree's age are made with historical events, like the tree taking root as empirical science was taking root in Europe during the life of 13th century philosopher Roger Bacon. The book is most commonly described, and marketed, as a "biography". One reviewer grouped it with the 2005 book The Golden Spruce as part of a new genre: an "arbobiography".
The book is written in the third person, omniscient, style. Grady's writing moderates Suzuki's characteristic rhetoric to create writing that is accessible, with a tone described as "a breezy casualness that welcomes the reader". According to Suzuki, making the book accessible required telling the story from a human perspective, including some anthropomorphism of biological processes.
Read more about this topic: Tree: A Life Story
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