In the Beech Forest (Gary Crew, illus by Den Scheer, Ford St)

A boy wanders into a forest of ‘ancient, primal’ beech trees. He is both a child with a toy sword, and an adventurer from one of his computer games. As he walks through the dense forest he contemplates the animals and the silence. But his imagination also runs wild. Could those ‘weird, mossy things’ be bones? Will dreadful creatures rise out of the darkness? At the end, he makes a discovery, and the reader will have to decide how much it is enhanced by the boy’s imagination. The images that accompany Gary Crew’s story are by first-time illustrator Den Scheer. They mainly depict the boy’s imaginary world; the fantastical, video-game based possibilities of the forest. The images are adequate, but some seem better worked (or scanned-in) than others. They also depict a physical transformation of the boy: his jacket becomes longer, he grows taller. He enters the forest with a toy sword and exits with a book. The design of In the Beech Forest doesn’t do it justice: the rusty/bark colouring clashes with the black, white and red illustrations, and the overall layout—bevelled boxes with drop shadow effects—looks a little amateurish. This book is best aimed at kids aged eight and up, encouraging them to explore different avenues of imagining.

Angela Meyer is a writer, blogger and former editor of Bookseller+Publisher.

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Category: Reviews