The Singing Tree
First edition cover
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| Author | Kate Seredy |
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| Illustrator | Kate Seredy |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's novel |
| Publisher | Viking Books |
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Publication date
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1939 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 247 pp |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | The Good Master |
The Singing Tree is a children's novel by Kate Seredy, the sequel to The Good Master. Also illustrated by Seredy, it was a Newbery Honor book in 1940. Set in rural Hungary four years after The Good Master, it continues the story of Kate and Jancsi, showing the effect of World War I on the people and land.
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The Singing Tree was well received when it came out. Horn Book Magazine included it on its Fanfare list of the best books of 1939.Kirkus Reviews gave it a starred review for "books of remarkable merit", saying it "might well be a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Peace. It has all the charm in text and pictures of its predecessor, The Good Master, and more mature technique. Story movingly told, skillfully interweaving incident and idea." In 1940 The Singing Tree was named a Newbery Honor book.
More recently, children's literature expert Anita Silvey singled out the book's "strong and moving narrative". A review in the Fresno Literature Examiner is more qualified in its praise. "The Singing Tree, like The Good Master, is a memorable tale for children to learn from by evoking powerful ideas of love and friendship through its text... However, Seredy’s display of political correctness somehow hurts the novel’s content".
Seredy was not afraid to tackle social issues in her books. She suffered physically and emotionally from the effects of nursing on the front during World War I, and she drew on her experience in several of her books, including the Singing Tree. It appeared in 1939, at the beginning of World War II, but Seredy did not write a patriotic story. Instead, war and the damage it does to people and the land is her theme. While the farm becomes a place of refuge for people from both sides of the conflict, leaving it to join the fighting almost destroys Uncle Marton. Seredy did not confine her story to showing only the problems of war for one side. According to Ann Bartholomew in Twentieth-Century Children's Writers Seredy was "one of the first children's writers to have dealt with the problems of the alien" during war times.
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