Abstract

El despertar del árbol by Dídac P. Lagarriga, author, and Albert Asensio, illustrator (2018), and Gabriela Mistral’s “La ronda de las manzanillas” (c.1950) are texts meant for children featuring the agency of plants; a young oak in Asensio and Lagarriga’s picturebook and chamomiles in Mistral’s poem. Lagarriga and Asensio explicitly embrace posthumanist thought regarding the hidden life of trees, whereas Mistral reveals a Franciscan worldview. By describing the natural process of cultivating self-awareness and the capacity of acting independently, unaligned from traditional understandings of child development, and linear evolution, both texts feature plant and child agency. Giving a voice to the more than human, these texts emphasise the relevance of the community and its permanence. In the picturebook we encounter a community of trees growing together and a community of children experiencing the forest; in the poem we find a community of camomiles and a community of girls dancing a ronda. In this article we seek to expose the rhetorical and visual devices deployed by the authors and illustrator to represent oaks and chamomiles which are constructed as active communicative subjects, open to interspecies encounters, attuned with and aware of natural cycles, within a wholesome process that allows the reader to find a voice and identity by experiencing nature.