Become a Readings Member to make your shopping experience even easier. Sign in or sign up for free!

Become a Readings Member. Sign in or sign up for free!

Hello Readings Member! Go to the member centre to view your orders, change your details, or view your lists, or sign out.

Hello Readings Member! Go to the member centre or sign out.

Once I was a Giant
Once I was a Giant
Once I was a Giant
Once I was a Giant
Once I was a Giant
Once I was a Giant
Once I was a Giant
Hardback

Once I was a Giant

$29.99 $24.99
Sign in or become a Readings Member to add this title to your wishlist.

Signed copies are available to pre-order online, while stock lasts.

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.

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.

Read More
In Shop
Out of stock
Shipping & Delivery

$9.00 standard shipping within Australia
FREE standard shipping within Australia for orders over $100.00
Express & International shipping calculated at checkout

MORE INFO
Format
Hardback
Publisher
Thames and Hudson (Australia) Pty Ltd
Country
Australia
Date
2 September 2025
Pages
48
ISBN
9781760764913

Signed copies are available to pre-order online, while stock lasts.

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.

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.

Read More
Format
Hardback
Publisher
Thames and Hudson (Australia) Pty Ltd
Country
Australia
Date
2 September 2025
Pages
48
ISBN
9781760764913
 
Book Review

Once I was a Giant
by Zeno Sworder

by Angela Crocombe, Aug 2025

This stunning book is an ode to trees and their relationship with humans, written from the perspective of a tree itself. The story begins immediately in the front endpapers with a picture-book maker who can’t think of an idea. That is, until his pencil starts talking to him! The pencil tells the story of its life as a tree living in the forest. The tree is befriended by a wanderer – a forest sprite – who tells stories of his adventures in the world. When the machines come, the wanderer gives the tree and the forest creatures advance warning.

With incredible drawings and a graphic style illustrating the natural world in all its glory, this powerful story reminds us of humanity’s connection to nature. Portraying the life of a tree from a little seed through to a giant forest elder, Once I was a Giant explores the theme of the cyclical nature of all life, with examples such as eggs in a nest hatching into hungry chicks. By the award-winning author of My Strange Shrinking Parents, this picture book is truly a work of art to pore over again and again, each time discovering new wonders. You’ll never look at a pencil in the same way again! For ages 5+.

Featured in

See what the Readings’ team have to say on the blog, discover related events and podcast episodes.