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Gr 6-9 Tree is the tallest 12-year-old anyone in his town has ever known. However, his height and nickname are just two of his worries. His parents have recently divorced and his grandfather has just had part of his leg amputated from an old Vietnam War injury. Tree splits his time between his Mom's new house and his old home with his father and grandfather, and tries to come to grips with his new, divided life. Unlike his two older brothers, he has no natural ath...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

At six feet, three and a half inches, Tree is the "tallest seventh-grade boy in the history of Eleanor Roosevelt Middle School." Yet during the course of this novel, the twelve-year-old continues to grow—emotionally, if not physically—as he adjusts to his parents' divorce, gets to know outspoken eighth-grader Sophie, and helps his grandfather recover from the amputation of his leg—a delayed consequence of being wounded in Vietnam. Bauer adopts a distinctive but choppy prose style here, relating Tree's story with lots of single-sentence paragraphs and too many lopped-off pronouns ("He looked for her in ...Log In or Sign Up to Read More