Author: Helen Ward
Illustrator: Wayne Anderson
Publisher: Puffin Books, 2001

This delightful, beautifully illustrated book tells the story of an old man who lives in a “wide and windswept place” filled with the leftover stuff nobody wants anymore. The man spends his days cleaning up the mess and dreaming of a beautiful forest in its place.

One day the man decides to act on his dream by shaping the junk into a vast forest of garbage and tin. Though the place doesn’t quite match the man’s dream, in a miraculous turn of events, life slowly begins to spring forth until the heaps of garbage are transformed into a beautiful wooded area.

The book’s warm and detailed illustrations invite young children to imagine and reflect on the story.

But it’s more than simply an engaging and charming story. The Tin Forest provides ways you can talk with your child about our Christian tradition.

The book leads children very naturally to wondering about the beauty of creation and our role in caring for it. When read alongside biblical passages, such as the parable of the mustard seed (Matthew 13:31-32), the stories elicit deep thinking on the mystery that is the kingdom of God.
 
The Tin Forest is one of six pieces of children’s literature that play a key role in a new curriculum, “Taking Root: Hunger Causes, Hunger Hopes” from Evangelical Lutheran Church in America World Hunger. The curriculum brings biblical texts into dialogue with popular children’s books to envision a world without hunger. Learn more about it at "Taking Root" on the ELCA Web site.