The Acorn and the Oak
By Rhonda Accardo
Reviewed by Mari Borstelmann
This is a story about a young girl and her mom who love walking together through the forest on a dirt road they know very well. At the end of the road is an old oak tree, a wonderful place for the girl and her mom to sit together and talk about nature. The girl learns how the Great Oak started as an acorn and grew to be so big and so important to many animals and birds in the forest. The girl comes to love the Great Oak and is deeply saddened one winter when she discovers that it has died. Her mom understands the sadness but explains that the Great Oak continues to take care of the forest by providing shelter to a family of raccoons and by giving life to the young oak trees growing where the Great Oak used to stand. She tells her daughter that a tree is beautiful when it is surrounded by other trees, “like a village full of friends and family who have watched it grow.”
The story of The Acorn and the Oak has connections to our own experiences of grief and loss. At the end of the book the author, Rhonda Accardo, connects the story to loss in her own family in a way that is uplifting and positive.
Suggested Activities: The Acorn and the Oak can be used to explore feelings of grief and loss. The book also ends with a short appendix that has easily accessible information about exploring nature. The entries can be starting points for elementary school children to learn about life in the forest.
Every once in a while, I google our names to see where our book as traveled. My daughter and I wrote and illustrated The Acorn and the Oak. I was thrilled to find our book on your site. Grief is such a difficult journey, even for those who have faith. The story was originally written for my aunt who had lost so much, to include her husband and then four of her six children. God was the foundation of her life. My daughters illustrations truly capture the story, but the final page of the story is my favorite. The original illustrations were painted on large sheets of paper to capture all of the details, that is except for the three butterflies, they were simply drawn with a pencil to look spiritual. They represent, The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost. Continuing to see all of the beauty in the world after so much loss is extremely difficult, but my aunt did . Thank you for reading and sharing our book, may it bring comfort to those in times of loss.