n the Beech Forest By Gary Crew and introducing: Den Scheer

In the Beech Forest

By Gary Crew and introducing: Den Scheer Pub. 2012

In the Beech Forest is a picture storybook, which is not bound by a time stamp but works to transcend the notion of being set from long ago, from now and from the future. This book is about an ordinary boy, who takes a path leading him from the safety of his home into the dark beech wood forest. His head is full of the fearful images from his computer games that so excite, and yet terrify him; battles between heroes and dreadful beasts that may haunt this primal landscape. What will become of him on this journey? Will he survive? Will he defeat his fears? Will he emerge, still an ordinary boy?

Gary Crew is at his superb best with this picture book letting the story unfold. It captured my attention from the very first sentence until the last. Crew’s literary strategy of using first person narration mixed with third person narration, placing the reader in the story interbred with being a spectator. This is an effective strategy for focalisation for readers. That is, with it’s outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters, from the outset.

We see that Crew is almost bombarding the audience with counter acting forces –the ordinary boy becoming special; the child becoming and adult; nature alone versus human alone; nature, as in the wilderness, versus the wildness of computer game fantasies; the old nature – beech forest - as opposed to the new, technology. It moves from realist to fantasy. And like most teenagers, they think the world revolves around them, and here the reader might see the boy as the central figure throughout the text, but is he? 

A great book to add to anyone's growing library. And a text which should be studied for years to come in any classroom.