Once I Was a Giant
Title: Once I Was a Giant
Author: Zeno Sworder
Publisher: Thames and Hudson Australia
Shortlist: Children's Literature
A meteoric new work from award-winning author-illustrator Zeno Sworder about hope for the future, the power of small beings and the special friendship of trees.
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.
Judges’ Report
Once I Was a Giant is a luminous elegy on memory, loss and regeneration, voiced by a tree who 'once touched the sun'. Zeno Sworder’s writing and art unfold with poetry and elegance. The text breathes alongside glowing illustrations to form an ecological meditation that is intimate and planetary. At the heart of the text is a friendship between wanderer and tree, presented as an exquisite study in care, belonging, and grief. Its quiet movement toward renewal resists sentimentality and offers hope without simplification. A profoundly moving picture book that invites us to sit with loss and gently imagine futures rooted in tenderness and return.
Extract
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About the Author
Zeno Sworder
VPLA book photography by Shannyn Higgins
The Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards are proudly supported by the Victorian Government.
