Tree Houses, Forts and Huts in Children’s Illustration

One major task for the children’s storyteller: Getting parents out of the story. Children need to be the drivers of their own narratives. Storytellers have come up with many ways of getting adult helpers and caregivers out of the way.

Here’s another: Give the child a home of their own. Within the world of the story, this play home may function as the permanent home. Or it may be a temporary construction with the safety of real home nearby. Doesn’t matter.

Sometimes barns are used for this purpose. Fern Arable’s ‘other’ home was the barn, and her ‘other family’ comprised the animals who lived in the barn. (Charlotte’s Web)

Ships and boats are also useful as second homes. They often end up on islands, where the child is free to do exactly as they wish for a little while before returning home. See Where The Wild Things Are.

Or perhaps the children go camping and pitch a tent. This might be in the back yard.

Scene from Bluey, made in Australia, a series all about having fun at home, dealing with emotions, suffering through rifts and making up.

Then there are forts.

Kids begin to build forts indoors around age 4, Sobel found, then start venturing outside around age 6 or 7 to construct dens, treehouses and other fort-like structures more independently, a practice that continues into their tweens. Metaphorically and physically, building forts reflects children’s growth as individuals, Sobel says; they create a “home away from home,” free from parental control. Forts also foster creativity.
Why Kids Love Building Forts

But I do love a good tree house.

When Lulu’s feeling well, she climbs every tree in sight, especially the tallest ones, the ones with the widest branches, the ones with the stickiest sap.

But when Lulu’s sick, she’s not allowed outside. She wonders if the trees are lonely without her. Maybe the birds are too.

Without Lulu, nobody climbs the trees but the sun. . . which casts a shadow on Lulu’s wall. . . for her to climb.

TREE HOUSES

Breakout by Kate Messner cover image

When you think of a tree house you likely conjure the image of a tiny house up in the branches. And these kinds of tree houses are common in children’s stories. Tree houses built around the base of tree trunks, and inside them, are also surprisingly popular, perhaps ever since apes came down from the trees and realised tree bases look disturbingly like feet. (See Baba Yaga.) There are many ways of living in (or below) a tree.

The Tip-Top Tree House Daisy Tucker Whitman Tell-a-Tale Book 1969

HOLES AND HOLLOWS IN THE TRUNK

a different style from Adrienne Segur. Thumbkin from the Fairy Tale Book, 1958

Delphine Durand

Jerzy Karolak, Elementarz Wiewioreczki, 1963

Marco Somà

Richard Scarry

Ernest Howard Shepard (1879-1976), from Winnie The Pooh

BIRD HOUSES HANGING OFF TREES

Kodomo no kuni (“Children’s Land”), 1922–30

Fritz Baumgarten 1886-1961

Jane Werner (1914-2005) and Cornelius De Witt (1925-1970) collaborated and produced this 1949 book called- Words How They Look and What They Tell

HOUSES BUILT IN THE BOUGHS

Benjamin Chaud

Arnold Lobel, Miss Suzy, 1964

Doris Susan Smith, Need a House Call Ms. Mouse, 1981

Janusz Stanny

From The Tall Book of Make Believe Selected by Jane Werner Pictures by Garth Williams 1950

Garth Williams illustrated this Giant Golden Book of Elves and Fairies 1951

Carl Strathmann The Stork Tree 1890s

The Christmas Party by Adrienne Adams, 1978

Doris Burn’s ‘Andrew Henry’s Meadow’

HOUSES BUILT AROUND THE BASE OF TREES

illustrator of the Toby Twirl books was the British artist Edward Jeffrey from Durham, 1898 -1978

From 1949 edition of Childcraft Books Milo Winter illustrator

1950, Little Golden Book, Richard Scarry, The Animals Merry Christmas tree house

Jill Barklem (1951 – 2017) Brambly hedge

This preliminary sketch for Spring Story, c. 1980, by Jill Barklem reminds me of E.H. Shepherd’s finished works in Winnie the Pooh.

Ocke, Nutta och Pillerill, Elsa Beskow 1939

Antonio Lupatelli, pseudonym Tony Wolf

Boris Diodorov, Winnie the Pooh

Natalia Trepenok, Russian folk tales

Marco Somà

Goodnight by Pixie O’Harris, 1957

DE NACHTMANNETJES (1946) Eetie van Rees

Marije Tolman, De boomhut

Trygve M. Davidsen (1895-1978) Tomten and Treehouse

VIEWS INSIDE THE TRUNK

Marla Frazee tree house illustration for Stars

from a Polish children’s book of the 1950s

Richard Scarry

Sophie Blackall, The Crows of Pearblossom

Gustaf Tenggren, Stories From a Magic World, 1938

John Anster Christian Fitzgerald (UK, 1819-1906), The Captive Robin, 1864

The Tale of the root children by Sibylle of Olfers

OTHER TREE HOUSE REPRESENTATIONS

David Weidman’s Bird Tree from 1965

Vintage German postcard

Cats of the Floating World an illustrated book from Taiwan

Terry Fan

Elsa Beskow

Mattias Adolfsson

illustration is from the story entitled The Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller, and of the Doom that Befell Him from The Book of Wonder by Lord Dunsany, illustration by Sidney Herbert Syme, 1912