Redwoods
Flashpoint, 2009
Young, urban boy bearing a notable resemblance to author and illustrator Jason Chin picks up a duplicate copy of Redwoods, which re-routes his F train to the redwood forest of the Pacific northwest. Avid readers of children's books will see and hear echoes of other publishing successes. The images and narrative arc remind me of David Weisner's Flotsom; the non-fiction data embedded in the adventure story recall the Magic Tree House series; and the book (as a portkey) and subway make me think of Harry Potter. But the protagonists of this book are redwood trees themselves. The little boy, like the pictures and the prose, is there to help us wrap our comparatively minute selves around the sheer time-space parameters of these trees. We count ourselves lucky to live 60 or 80 years and reach a height closer to 6 feet; by contrast, redwoods live 2,000 years and reach 370 feet. But such impressive numbers are still dry facts compared to embodied experience. For those who have not yet made the journey to the Avenue of the Giants, Redwoods can help with imagining it.
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