Once I was a Giant by Zeno Sworder

Once I was a Giant by Zeno Sworder2026 CBCA SHORTLISTED PICTURE BOOK OF THE YEAR When a picture book maker runs out of stories, his pencil decides it's time to tell her own 'My first memories were of darkness and reaching for sunlight. My roots connected me to everything. I was small but I was also the forest.' Here is the story of a green giant and a small wanderer who formed a friendship that spanned lifetimes. From the award winning author of My Strange Shrinking Parents comes a

2026 CBCA SHORTLISTED PICTURE BOOK OF THE YEAR

When a picture-book maker runs out of stories, his pencil decides it's time to tell her own...

'My first memories were of darkness and reaching for sunlight. My roots connected me to everything. I was small but I was also the forest.'

Here is the story of a green giant and a small wanderer who formed a friendship that spanned lifetimes.

From the award-winning author of My Strange Shrinking Parents comes a luminescent and hopeful tale about our living natural world.

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From Zeno: This is a book where the tree is the protagonist and hero. As we all tumble towards an increasingly digital, atomised and urbanised world I wanted to make a story about the natural world that touches on ideas of interdependence, metamorphosis and impermanence. Trees make all of our lives possible but they are often absent from stories because we tend to only care and feel for characters that are like us. This story aims to bring trees alive for young people by telling an imaginative story rooted in recent scientific discoveries about the social lives of trees and their abilities to communicate, learn and feel. The story covers the entire span of an individual tree's life and the intimate relationships it shares with the forest and the creatures that it nourishes and houses.