where the forest meets the sea by jeannie baker

The story is very simple but because of this it really makes the book unique. Everything from the collage illustrations to the imaginative elements of long lost dinosaurs and prehistoric beasts, it simply captivated me.

This book literally gave me goose pimples! It may not be for everyone but as I love Australia and anything to do with the environment this was the whole package. Now considering that rainforests the world over are often if not generally fragile and threatened nowadays, I really do hope that NONE of the collected and preserved natural materials have come from the area (from the rainforest) being depicted and described in Where the Forest Meets the Sea (however, I do have the uncomfortable and sad sneaking suspicion that this might very well be the case, that Jeannie Baker might have, indeed, and likely willingly, knowingly used collected and preserved rainforest materials for her collages, which would be a major bone of contention and ecological no-no with and for me).

So yes, while I have generally rather enjoyed (and most definitely academically appreciated) Jeannie Baker’s Where the Forest Meets the Sea and have on an entirely aesthetic and visual level absolutely cherished the detailed and intricate collage like illustrations, in my opinion, Where the Forest Meets the Sea would probably if not even actually work much better as a wordless offering, namely because Baker's artwork is just so much more detailed and intricate than her rather sparse and in my opinion quite majorly unimaginative text (which I also tend to think rather does limit the pictures as a whole, since the fact remains that without the author/illustrator's limited and limiting narrative, there would in my opinion be much more scope for the imagination, for independent storytelling, as well as discussions concerning Australia's rainforests, their grandeur, but also the modern, mostly man-made threats they are currently facing and experiencing).Īnd apropos to the illustrations of Where the Forest Meets the Sea, although yes, I really and truly have very much visually enjoyed them and their minute, exquisite detail, it also does kind of bother me more than a trifle that Jeannie Baker has supposedly made use of preserved and collected natural materials for her collages (as the author's note at the back of Where the Forest Meets the Sea does definitely seem to indicate this).

Where the forest meets the sea by jeannie baker