Story about small people living in a tree; main character has to escape after his father invents something that other tree people want

Question

Two years ago I read a story about little people living in a tree. The hero's father makes an invention that the people in the tree want, and things proceed from there until the hero becomes on the run.

Answer 1

Toby Alone (2006) by Timothée de Fombelle? Apparently it's also known under the title A Life Suspended.

From Wikipedia:

A 13-year-old boy named Toby Lolness, who is just one and a half millimetres tall, lives in a civilization nestled in an oak tree. On his seventh birthday, his father, a scientist named Sim, creates a black box that causes one of his toys to move around by harnessing the power of crude sap. However, when Sim refuses to tell anybody how he did it, he and his family are banished to the Lower Branches, where Toby meets his best friend, Elisha Lee for the first time.

When Toby is thirteen, his parents are arrested by the evil corporant tyrant Joe Mitch, who has a pathological obsession with hole-digging, and thrown into a prison on a mistletoe ball called Tumble. He desperately wants to learn how to use the sap for his biggest project, the Big Crater, a massive hole in the middle of the tree, and Toby finds himself on the run from his own people. He struggles to survive alone.