Frequently asked questions about The Tree Talks Back*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Q: Is a mangosteen the best fruit in the world?
    • A: Have you ever eaten one?
  • Q: No.
    • A: Then yes.
  • Q: Yes what?
    • A: Can I get back to you? I’m expecting a counter offer from the Durian Growers Marketing Board.

 

  • Q: Where did the girl’s socks come from?
    • A: Cotton? Petroleum? Sunlight? Bangladesh? The store? Define ‘come from.’

 

  • Q: You didn’t pay any money to have this book printed, did you?
    • A: Why do you ask?

 

  • Q: What do you say to critics who call this book unabashedly Seussian?
    • A: I’m not sure what that means, but I do not like it. Not one little bit.
  • Q: I detect shades of James Whitcomb Riley.

 

  • Q: Is a tomato a fruit?
    • A: Is a question an answer?

 

 

  • Q: Why the obsession with fruit anyway?
    • A: Blame the marketing department. It was a ‘branding’ decision. We were looking for product placement opportunities, and Mother Nature came calling. In hindsight it was probably a mistake. Fruit doesn’t keep for very long. But somehow ‘The Skittles Shrub Meets its Match’ didn’t resonate with parentage of the pre-teen demographic.
  • Q: Are you saying the story was based on marketing research?
    • A: Listen. Before the Japanese Whaling Board got to Melville, Moby Dick was going to be titled ‘Revenge of the Mackerel.’

 

  • Q: How did you come up with all those rhymes?
    • A: The author can’t rap, but claims he used no rhyming apps.
  • Q: I can tell.
    • A: Oh yeah?? Well, you smell!!

 

 

  • Q: Where did the girl get the cherry picker?
    • A: You’ll have to ask the illustrator. She’s also in charge of cherry picker sales and distribution for the Northwest Region.
  • Q: Is that technically a product placement?
    • A: I don’t know. But I think you could probably buy the prototype for $9.99 if you’re interested and can come and pick it up.
  • Q: Can I see it first?
    • A: Yes, but you’ll have to beat the fish in a card game.
  • Q: Lemme guess: Go fish?
    • A: . . . Very astute indeed. You’re approaching trap door-level.
  • Q: Okay. Let’s say I win. Does it actually pick cherries?
    • A: The fish?
  • Q: No. The cherry picker.
    • A: Define ‘pick.’

 

  • Q: Do you have a gluten-free version of the book?
    • A: Duh! But . . .  according to the ferret, it tastes different.

 

  • Q: What happened with the page ‘numbering?’
    • A: There were some creative differences between the Tree Community and the author and illustrator. The understory and overstory animals were demanding royalties, but were unwilling to assume any debt incurred from unrecovered printing costs. The author and illustrator retaliated by threatening to write a sequel reportedly involving a catastrophic lava flow. The birds didn’t seem to mind, but the other animals were opposed. They finally settled on replacing the page numbers with little pictures of the animals.
  • Q: Ah, the ‘fear/relief’ technique: Scare them with the haunting specter of a cataclysmic sequel, the truncated trilogy if you will, and then offer a token appeal to their vanity.
    • A: I made all that up. I think we accidentally used some off-brand wingding font or something.

 

  • Q: How did you come up with the name for the book?
    • A: You’d have to ask the VP of Marketing. There should be a forwarding address here somewhere . . .
  • Q: Speaking of marketing, what is your goal for this book?
    • A: This book? Sister, that’s the tip of the iceberg. The snow cap on the volcano. The fly in the ointment. The mouse caught in an elephant stampede. The scorpion in the caravan. The wart on the tip of the nose. The mold on the circus peanut. And really, these are children. How hard can it possibly be to write for kids? Complete sentences, right?? Anyway, now that we have a publishing house, No  egrets Publishing, this book is only the beginning of a long, torturous artistic decline from slapstick sophistry into crass commercialism. And while we don’t really know what a publishing house looks like, we do receive the occasional office supplies catalog through direct mail marketing, have what you might think of as sort of a warped double-vision, and given enough time, money and caffeine, we fully intend to inflict it on the world.

 

 

*Frequencey 1.

This FAQ has not been approved by the FAQ Quality Review Board, which gave it its lowest, ‘less informative than Presidential Debates’ rating.