The Man Who Planted Trees

I wanted to share this well-known, freely-available short story published in 1953 called "The Man Who Planted Trees" by Jean Giono. It's a beautiful story that speaks to the importance of the natural world and natural life cycles to our quality of life. A healthy and thriving natural world is a crucial element in feng shui.

A fictional story, the goal of it, as stated by Giono, "was to make trees likable, or more specifically, make planting trees likable."

Read the 8-page story "The Man Who Planted Trees" by Jean Giono

You can also watch the hand-drawn, 30-minute animated version of the story that took five years and 20,000 drawings to create below (it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1988):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY_zuNtf3_g

About the Author

Jean Giono, the only son of a cobbler and a laundress, was one of France’s greatest writers. His prodigious literary output included stories, essays, poetry, plays, filmscripts, translations and over thirty novels, many of which have been translated into English. Giono was a pacifist, and was twice imprisoned in France at the outset and conclusion of World War II. He remained tied to Provence and Manosque, the little city where he was born in 1895 and, in 1970, died.

Giono was awarded the Prix Bretano, the Prix de Monaco (for the most outstanding collected work by a French writer), the Légion d’Honneur, and he was a member of the Académie Goncourt.