The Singing Tree

This impressive children's novel, published in 1939, is set in rural Hungary during the First World War. The central character, Jancsi, as an adolescent, takes charges of the large family farm when his father leaves for the front. A contemporary review considered it “as moving a plea as I can imagine for maintaining racial and international goodwill”. In particular, the novel describes the close relationship between the Hungarians and the Jews in the village, the mutual respect between the Hungarian family and the Russian prisoners of war who they engage as farm labourers and the friendship towards hungry German children who are sent to the farm for nutrition towards the end of the war. The title of the novel comes from a story which Jancsi’s father tells the family about a battlefield where only one tree survives the devastation. All the birds of different sizes come and sit in the tree and sing. One of the characters recognises that he's also using this story to talk about his farm as a place of wartime refuge.

The author, Kate Seredy (née Serédy Kató, born 10 November 1899), grew up in Budapest. She served as a nurse to the wounded during the First World War. After the war she qualified as an art teacher. She emigrated to the United States in 1922. Her first novel (The Good Master, set in Hungary, with her own illustrations) was published in 1935 and was shortlisted for the Newbury Medal. Her third novel, The White Stag, won her the Newbury Medal in 1938 and her fourth novel (this one) was, like The Good Master, of which it is the sequel, shortlisted for the Newbury Medal. She settled in Montgomery in New York State. During her career, she wrote and illustrated 12 books of her own and illustrated many other books for children.

Jancsi and his father (before leaving for the Front)

Hans, one of the German refugee children who come to live on the farm, writes home to his mother in the autumn of 1917:
“These people do not hate anyone. In our school in Berlin we were told that Russians and English and French are monsters... That is not true, Mother. The six Russians... are like German men, like Papa. Maybe the French and English men are the same. Our teacher told a lie about the Jews too...
I do not hate Russians now, Mother, and I think the Jews are very kind and good. When I grow up, I want to be a teacher and teach what Grigori is always saying. He says that people are all the same in Russia and Germany and Hungary and that we are all brothers. It's true, Mother. Why did our teacher in Berlin lie to us?”