Wishtree— Historical Context & Author Background
Author: Katherine Applegate · Published 2017· Era: Contemporary·215 pages
Themes explored: community, prejudice, belonging, nature, wishes, kindness
About Katherine Applegate
Katherine Applegate (born 1956) is a Newbery Medal-winning author best known for The One and Only Ivan and the Animorphs series. She wrote Wishtree in response to the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in America, particularly following the 2016 election. Applegate has spoken about her desire to write a book that addressed prejudice at a level appropriate for young readers — honest enough to name the problem, gentle enough not to overwhelm, and hopeful enough to suggest that individuals can make a difference. Her choice of a tree narrator reflects her belief that the best way to discuss human failing is sometimes through a non-human perspective that can observe without participating in the social dynamics being critiqued.
Life → Text Connections
How Katherine Applegate's real experiences shaped specific elements of Wishtree.
Applegate's Newbery Medal-winning The One and Only Ivan used a gorilla narrator to explore captivity and freedom
Wishtree uses a tree narrator to explore belonging and exclusion — the same technique of non-human perspective creating emotional distance from difficult themes
Applegate has mastered the use of non-human narrators as moral positions. The technique works because it removes the reader from their own social position and allows them to see human behavior from outside.
Applegate wrote Wishtree during a period of rising Islamophobia and xenophobia in the United States
The novel directly addresses anti-Muslim prejudice through the 'LEAVE' carving and Samar's exclusion
The book is a deliberate response to its political moment, but Applegate's craftsmanship ensures it transcends that moment — the story works for any community dealing with prejudice against newcomers.
Applegate has spoken about the importance of hope in children's literature, arguing that honesty about problems must be balanced with belief in solutions
Wishtree is unflinching about prejudice but ultimately hopeful — the ending doesn't erase the hate but shows it can be overwhelmed by kindness
The balance between honesty and hope is the novel's greatest achievement. It neither minimizes the problem nor suggests it's unsolvable.
Historical Era
Post-2016 America — rising Islamophobia, xenophobic rhetoric in national politics, community-level responses to hate crimes
How the Era Shapes the Book
Wishtree is a product of its political moment — the 'LEAVE' carved into Red's trunk is a stand-in for the thousands of small acts of exclusion that Muslim Americans experienced during and after 2016. But Applegate grounds the story in universal patterns (Red has seen this cycle before) to argue that current prejudice is neither unprecedented nor permanent. The political specificity gives the novel urgency; the historical perspective gives it wisdom.
Why Wishtree Matters Historically
Wishtree became one of the most widely used books in American elementary and middle school classrooms for teaching about prejudice, empathy, and community response to hate. Its non-human narrator made it uniquely accessible for young readers encountering these themes for the first time, while its literary quality earned it respect among educators and critics. The novel demonstrated that middle-grade fiction could address Islamophobia specifically — naming the prejudice rather than generalizing it — without overwhelming its audience.
- One of the first widely-read middle-grade novels to address anti-Muslim prejudice directly and specifically
- Demonstrated that tree-narrated fiction could carry serious social themes without sacrificing accessibility
- Established a model for addressing contemporary political issues in children's literature through non-human perspective
Occasionally challenged for its depiction of Islamophobia — some parents objected to the topic being raised with young children, while others felt the Muslim characters were insufficiently developed. The challenges reveal the difficulty of writing about prejudice for young audiences: any depiction is too much for some and not enough for others.