Andersen Press nets environmental picture book from Monks  

Andersen Press has secured Adoette, a new picture book by Lydia Monks inspired by a campaign to save trees near her Sheffield home.  

Editorial director Sue Buswell acquired world rights from Hilary Delamere at The Agency. Adoette will be published in hardback on 1st September 2022, with a second book to follow in 2025.

The publisher wrote: “Adoette lived to be 100 years old. Just imagine all the things she saw! She lived on the same street all her life, but one day, people decided it would be best if she would go... Lydia Monks beautifully tells the tale of the life of one tree, from a young sapling to a mighty oak, becoming the beating heart of the community she lived in, right up until the day they cut her down. But there’s hope, when one little girl takes one of her acorns to plant in the community garden.” 

Buswell commented: “I have been passionate about the nurture and planting of native trees for as long as I can remember and now, more than ever, as the importance of trees to our well being and environment is more widely understood, I am so proud that Lydia chose Andersen Press as publisher for this stunning, timely and compelling story.”  

Monks added: “In 2014, Sheffield council started cutting down thousands of healthy, mature street trees. One of the trees on the list to be felled was outside my daughter’s school. It was a big old ash tree, that had probably stood there for 150 years, long before the school was built. The school children played around it after school, and it seemed like a friendly presence on the street. I wondered about what the tree had witnessed over the years, and that inspired the book. Adoette is a Native American name which means ‘large tree’. Lots of people, including myself, joined campaign groups to save the Sheffield trees, and happily the old ash tree is still standing today.”