Once I was a Giant

by Zeno Sworder (Illustrator)

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.

Genres: Picture Books

48 pages, Hardcover

Published September 2, 2025

About the author

Zeno Sworder is a writer and artist who lives in Melbourne with his young family. After studying Chinese literature and migration law at university, he ended up as a dishwasher. Later, he went on to work as a journalist, an English language teacher, a consular officer, an advocate for refugees and immigrants, and a jewelry designer. He is a lover of all stationery but has a particular soft spot for pencils. Sworder is the CBCA New Illustrator of the Year 2021, and his first book This Small Blue Dot was a CBCA Notable Book, the winner of the 2021 Australian Book Designers Association’s Award for Best Designed Children’s Illustrated Book, and the Designers’ Choice Children’s/Young Adult Book of the Year.

Reviews

[Jennie · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enigmatic and challenging tale of the life of a tree told by one of its end products - a pencil, in the hands of a master visual storyteller. Dark, muted pastels convey the majesty of the giant tree and its surrounding forest and the joy of the visitations from the wanderer, a wood sprite?, who relates the passing of time. The bleak devastation of the cleared land is beautifully contrasted with the quiet work of the wanderer to reseed the forest.

Sworder's thoughtful and thought provoking story explores nature and life cycles that support regeneration and reforestation.

[Indigo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful