BIG TREE

A broad history of our planet overlaid on a seed’s experience of time and change.

Spun out to doorstopper dimensions by the overly liberal use of single lines of narrative on otherwise blank pages, Selznick’s latest fulsomely illustrated tale twines storylines large-scaled and small-, literal and metaphorical, immediate and spanning billions of years. In a Cretaceous forest, the desperate efforts of sycamore seed Merwin to protect his visionary little sibling Louise make for adventures aplenty involving fire, winds, dinosaurs, and even a volcanic eruption—with occasional breaks for flashbacks or philosophical dialogues with their loving Mama, a decomposing leaf, and the Earth itself. He eventually fails, as the two are swept off in different directions. They reunite many years later to grow up side by side, branches intertwined, after which the author fast-forwards to the present and a seedling’s rescue from a city sidewalk crack by a little Black girl. Most of the illustrations come in wordless, full-page sequential bursts, and if their ultra-soft focus isn’t particularly suitable for capturing more violent events, the lyrical, dramatic, and comical ones glow with vivid, cinematic intensity. In a lengthy afterword the author provides nature notes as well as describing the story’s origins as a movie concept from Steven Spielberg (whose tendency toward sentimentality is all over this), closing with a bibliography that includes, appropriately, The Carrot Seed and A Tree Is Nice.

Patchy and sentimental but central to our past, present, and future; at once grand and intimate.