"In a cave, on top of a crag, in the middle of a huge forest, lived a giant. The giant spent all day, day after day, doing what giants do... pulling up trees as though they were weeds, heaving and hurling huge logs like spears, and smashing and mashing mountains." This way of life is all well and good until the giant realizes his hard work has resulted in the disappearance of the forest and all the wildlife and its sounds. But when a small yellow bird shows up, singing and following him around all day, the heartened giant finds hope for his loneliness. He puts her in a cage. Unfortunately, he has yet to learn that nature shouldn't be destroyed or contained for one's own pleasure.
British author-illustrator Sophie Ambrose's lovely debut provides gentle lessons on friendship, freedom and a human's relationship with the natural world. Her tremendously appealing acrylic, watercolor and colored pencil illustrations capture the ingenuous violence of a giant who knows no other way to live. The aggressive bashing of mountains is offset by the delicate precision with which he pulls up trees by the roots. His big square-jawed face is kind, even as he goes about his workaday business of destroying things. Readers will be especially moved by the illustration of the giant sipping a teeny-tiny cup of tea in his cave--at his feet the in-progress carvings of the very animals he has displaced. And when he oh-so-gently holds the yellow bird on the tip of his rough finger and apologizes for caging her, it's clear change is in the air. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor