Customer Reviews

Tree By Leaf

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Tree by Leaf by Cynthia Voigt is about a girl named Clothilde Speer who lives on a peninsula in Maine that she owns. Her father has returned from the war (World War 1) disfigured and so ashamed because of it that he retreats to the boathouse and refuses to see his family. Her older brother Nate has gone to Boston to live with their rich grandfather. Her mother has assumed the role of a "lady" and refuses to do any work, and since their hired girl is leaving, that leaves Clothilde to do all the work. She's very upset, but then she hears a mysterious Voice out in the woods that talks to her and seems to be coming from the air. It asks her what she wants most, and she tells it. She figures that she just dreamed the whole thing. But then the things that Clothilde wished for start to come true, in horrible ways that she never meant to happen. Can Clothilde fix the damage that she has done? Will the Voice ever come back to explain itself? This book was good, but it was a bit confusing at times. I mean, a Voice coming from the trees and the air? But despite that it was pretty good.

Clothilde is a girl who lives in Maine in 1920. After her father comes home from the war disfigured and she has all these other problems on the home front, Clothilde takes a walk in the woods where she thinks she hears a voice telling her to share her wishes. Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for is what I think the point of this story is, but I'm not sure. This book is just okay, but not great.

This tells the story of a girl in the years after World War I. Clotilde is a rather unlikable heroine. She has reason to be moody and dark however -- her father has come home from the war disfigured, her mother has withdrawn to be "ladylike", her brother has betrayed her family and gone back to his grandfather who is filthy rich, her best friend is fired from her job as maid. A mysterious Voice offers Clotilde the answers to her wishes. I'm still trying to figure out the point of this story. Most of Voight's other books seem to have points, this one just wanders around and nothing really is resolved at the end.