I love to go to the Beloit Public Library and pick out books with my daughter Iris. It’s especially fun to find books that I had read as a child. One book I remembered loving, but couldn’t find in the library, is called Backyard Giant.
I recently ordered a used copy on the Internet. Backyard Giant, as I recalled it over the space of 40 years, was a book from the perspective of wild animals like a rabbit, a squirrel and a blue jay. Each page revealed just the shadow of a menacing giant and yet another animal fleeing in fear.
It was exquisitely suspenseful to think that there might be a real giant outside, and that he might be lurking close by. The shadows and the frightened animals were proof that the giant existed. I remember getting to the last page when it was revealed that the backyard giant was really you, the little kid: that you were the biggest and baddest animal in the neighborhood.
Backyard Giant is not a great book. It’s a Disney book, and I can see why it’s out of print. From the front cover anyone can tell from across the room that the backyard giant is a little kid. Rereading the book to Iris, I was disappointed in my poor taste in literature as a child. But somehow the book stuck with me while other better books did not.
I’ve been backpacking in wild-lands around the world; in these areas I tend not to be frightened of the wild creatures around me. I know that members of my race are the most monstrous creatures in the woods. So it’s true that my environmental consciousness was kindled, around age five, by a Disney book.
I’m Chris Fink, and that’s my perspective
