After being reintroduced to this text after many years, I fell in love with it all over again. My co-operating teacher read this story during a whole group lesson on inferencing and I was amazed at how well this text worked with the standard. Essentially the story is about a man who is contemplating cutting down a large tree in the Amazon Forest. Before doing so, he falls asleep beneath the tree and the animals and a child speak to the man in an attempt to convince him to decide differently. Each page gives an opportunity for the teacher to stop and ask the students to use their background knowledge and infer what would happen if the man were to cut down the tree. Within each page, there were clues that if the student was listening he or she would easily be able to make an inference. This story is leveled as a 3.8 on the accelerated reader system. 

This book will help my children gain a better sense of words having more than one meaning. For example, foot in the book is used as "He sat at the foot of the tree." Children need to know that the word used in the sentence is not an actual foot, but is referring to the bottom of the tree. Furthermore, as we gain knowledge about words and their meaning used in the text we are also gaining knowledge about the rain forest. How exciting! This book would be great for a second grade class, possibly even first grade.