The Pecan Tree

The Pecan Tree
Matt Robinson ~ Robert Velde
Random House, 1971

Today seems like a good day to pull out some of my old Sesame Street book and records... the most famous of these being the Carroll Spinney penned and illustrated How to be a Grouch... not to mention the one I'm still looking to replace but can't find, The Sesame Street Pet Show... and these, by the late, great Matt Robinson (Sesame's original Gordon and father to actress Holly Robinson), that for some reason scared me in a fun way when I was little. I remember having the whole "Gordon of Sesame Street Tells a Story" series and all of them gave me a delightful sense of the willies: The Six-Button Dragon, Giveaway Gibson and mostly A Lot of Hot Water. Here, it was the knowing that the tree was going to fall and the not knowing exactly when I think that freaked me out... in the best way, mind you.

Soooo, Agricultural Carter plants a pecan tree.

And that tree grew... and grew... and grew... until is grew so large that it spread all over the village. Not only that, but the pecans were so big that when they fell off the tree, they were like big rocks from the sky, and they crashed down on the tops of the little houses, and not a man, not a woman, not a child in the village was safe from the giant pecan tree.

All these books taught a positive morality lesson, and after the entire town takes a whack at cutting the tree down, it ends up that working together is what finally conquers the beast. Ahhh, the memories. If the boy's love of these books is any indication, they still make for a pretty good read.

(Anyone know anything about the artist?)

Other Old Sesame Street Titles:
Sherlock Hemlock and the Great Twiddlebug Mystery
Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum
The In and Out and All About Sesame Street Coloring Book
The Together Book
The Many Faces of Ernie
The Great Cookie Thief
Sesame Street 1,2,3 Story Book
The Amazing Mumford and His Amazing Subtracting Trick
The Sesame Street Bedtime Storybook

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