A new tree is planted every time someone is born on Ayla’s street. There are trees, tall and strong, planted way back when Ayla’s Pop was born, and Ayla and her friend Kiri also have their own trees. Ayla’s is a baby birch and Kiri’s is baby pine.

Years before, their teacher asked them to draw a picture of what they’d like to grow up to be. Both Ayla and Kiri knew what they’d draw without even speaking the words – a tree. A mean girl in their class scoffed at them, but the friends meant exactly what they said. This wished they were trees.

Together they have looked after the trees in their street, watering them with hoses and buckets when they needed it and spending time in the branches talking and watching their neighbourhood. They even had a special code they used by shaking the branches that only they understood. In fact Ayla and Kiri have done everything together since they can remember.

Ayla wishes Kiri would come back. It’s been months since she’s seen her closest-friend-ever, and she misses Kiri intensely. Other kids offer to walk with Ayla to school, or spend some of their summer holidays with her, but Ayla would prefer to wait for Kiri to return.

But it’s been forever, and Ayla can’t contact Kiri, instead counting down the days to Kiri’s birthday party. Ayla has collected all of the Kiri connected items in their house, including the special candles they use on both their birthday cakes. But will Kiri make it back in time?

While Ayla waits, an old fashioned phone appears in Ayla’s tree. One of those rotary ones where you have to wait for the dial to spin all the way back before you entered another number. Who put it there? When a young resident decides to use it to talk to a lost loved one, Ayla scoffs at him – feeling like the mean girl from school.

But then she saw others using it – even full grown adults. Could there really be someone on the other end?

Told in the viewpoint of a young grieving girl in denial of her loss, Telephone of the Tree is based on Itaru Sasaki’s phone booth in Japan, where people can symbolically call deceased loved ones.

Ayla’s slow, painful journey to acceptance that her friend is gone, is beautifully written and with an authentic voice. Others too are grieving, and an old telephone gives them a way to connect with lost loved ones – finally breaking through the main character’s denial and allowing her to heal.

I loved the way Ayla’s family let her grieve in her own way, and as the truth slowly reveals itself to Ayla’s consciousness, the reader understands what happened in her quiet, one way street, one rainy day.

Beautiful.

Author – Alison McGhee

Age – 8+

Read an Excerpt here

(2024, Penguin Aust, Family, Friendship, Animals, Grief, Growing up, Love, One way street, Dog, Telephone, Calling loved ones, Trees, Birch tree, Oak tree, Remembering trauma, Birthday, Memory, Nightmare, Grieving Process, Lost friend, Loss, Understanding, Patience)