I have always thought that a tree house would be the ultimate place to live.
I played in a variety of tree houses as a kid, some were pretty elaborate with windows and trapdoors, some were just a spot in a tree with an imaginary house around me.
I remember being fascinated with the idea of tribes in Irian Jaya living in tree houses way up in the forest canopy.
I fell in love with the Ewok tree houses in Star Wars.
Only recently have I put two and two together to realise just how often tree houses appear in stories I read as a kid, from the Swiss Family Robinson to Owl’s home in Winnie-the-Pooh to the Lord of the Rings.
And now as an adult, I can relive those dreams with lots of cool books full of tree houses, from Victorian Garden tree houses to tree houses in French public parks, to family homes in Ethiopia to tree hotels in Costa Rica. If you want to be inspired, try these two books for starters :
- Treehouses by Paula Henderson and Adam Mornement
- Exceptional treehouses by Alain Laurens
Or you could even do your kids a favour and build them their own tree house!
Christchurch City Libraries Blog 
I was looking through the Exceptional Treehouses book the other day and was amazed at how elaborate some of them were. I’ve always loved walking through the forest in Hanmer and dreamed about how cool it would be to live up amongst them. My only problem is I don’t like heights, but I guess you’d get used to it.
i am not a big fan of heights either, somehow i don’t seem to mind being up a tree, but make me stand on the edge of a cliff and i get the heebeejeebees!
Ooh, I want one! One of my most favourite books as a child was Enid Blyton’s The Secret Island, where the 3 Arnold kids and their clever friend Jack run away to (of course) a secret island, where they build a house out of willow trees and live in it. I would SO still do that.
There is some rather expensive accomodation up near Kaikoura http://www.hapukulodge.com/kaikoura/tree-houses/home that you could maybe shout yourself MJ?
oh bliss. this would be a real treat 😉
As I read your post I kept seeing images from a delightful novel I read quite some time ago: “Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard” by Kiran Desai. The main character ends up in a tree, for quite some time if I remember rightly. A highly recommended read.
thanks for the recommendation helen. another tree-friendly book to add to my reading list.