No matter what odd thing is happening in Treehorn's world-and some very odd things happen-the adults never show any interest. I don't want to read these stories too literally and miss the whimsy of them, but there's a slightly sad and detached tone here. The wry humor of Treehorn's exploits is evident from the first page, and the stranger things get, the more they are treated as natural and normal. Heide's matter-of-fact handling of the most fantastic occurrences is complemented by Gorey's spare, eccentric illustrations. This three-volume set, beautifully put together and printed to last, is a pleasure to experience. This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.What an odd little set of stories Florence Parry Heide and Edward Gorey have collaborated to create. STRONGly recommended now I'm seriously considering investing in the more recently published Treehorn Trilogy! ( ) It all sounds so simple just told like that, but the magic is precisely in the telling with a very funny text by Heide and those great b&w drawings by Gorey. In book 3, Treehorn's Wish, he discovers a genie in a bottle, and his biggest problem is to figure out what his third wish should be, after he's wasted the first two wishes on basic things like a birthday cake and candles, because everybody has forgotten it's his special day, including both parents and his supposed best friend too. In book 2, Treehorn's Treasure, his father is having money problems, and meanwhile Treehorn has discovered that the tree in their backyard is literally sprouting dollar bills, but again, no one will listen when he mentions this. It soon becomes clear that Treehorn is a perfectly normal little boy, his main problem being that all the adults around him are too self-absorbed to listen to a word he says. When he tries to alert his parents to this mysterious occurrence, all they're able to do is tell him to sit up straight at the breakfast and dinner table. Then as time goes by, his clothes get too big and he has to jump out of bed when he wakes up, since his feet no longer reach the floor. When we meet Treehorn in The Shrinking Treehorn, he's just discovered he's mysteriously shrunken when he finds he can't reach a shelf in his closet he has always managed to reach before (it's an important shelf too, since that's where he keeps his bubblegum and candy bars hidden). I devoured this omnibus paperback edition of Treehorn Times Three from 1991, which I borrowed from the libary in a short sitting on my sunny balcony today, and couldn't stop smiling through it all.

The treehorn trilogy