In a desert valley, surrounded by mountains of rock and cacti, is a tiny village.’
This is a boy’s home. He never wanders far from his home as he can hear the coyote’s howling at night and the neighbourhood dogs barking in return.
One day he goes to stay with his grandpa whose home is far away from any village. His grandpa wants to show him around where he grew up. He wants to take him exploring. But the boy only wants to play on his tablet. He doesn’t want to explore the countryside.
That evening he accidently leaves his bag outside and it is stolen by a coyote. His tablet was inside and a cake his mother had made for them to eat. He feels so unhappy without his tablet, so he heads off to look for it. It’s not long before he realises he is lost. He imagines sounds and danger all around him. He manages to stay calm enough to see the shape of the mountain behind his grandpa’s house. He walks towards it and arrives home safely.
He hugs his grandpa hard, saying how this place scares him. His grandpa is impressed with how he found his way back but says, ‘Why chico? Why be afraid?’
Now grandpa takes him exploring. He shows him amazing plants from ocotillo to pincushions and fishhooks. They sit quietly at a distance from a beautifully patterned snake as it slithers way.
‘Open your heart, listen, and see what wonders show themselves,’ his grandpa says.
This is classic Jeannie Baker. Every page is made up of her incredible collages creating real-life scenes of the tropical desert. You can’t help but be mesmerised by the depth of her pictures and wonder at the length of time it must take to make the collages.
Her story takes place in the valley of the Cirios in the Sonoran Desert, which covers a third of Baja California. It is a protected area of land in Mexico and under consideration to be named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Although remote, this is a land still threatened by mining and tourism.
Baker’s environmental message is beautifully told in both words and pictures blending to perfection. To stop, look around you, and appreciate the true wonder of our world. It is life changing. A wonderful gem of a book.
Reviewed by Merle Morcom
Age Guide 3+
OTHER TITLES
Where the Forest Meets the Sea
Q&A WITH JEANNIE BAKER
What is a collage?
A collage is something that’s made from a number of different pieces, which are then stuck together. You could make a collage just from pieces of paper joined together, but in my collages I use a large variety of materials.
Why do I work in collage?
I don’t know any other way of achieving the results that collage can give me. I’ve always loved textures and started as a painter trying to reproduce textures using paint. Then I thought, why not use the actual textures and that is what I do now.
What do I use to make my collages?
Whenever I can I use the real material … because for me that gives the result I am wanting. For example, if I want to show an area of sand in my picture I’ll use real sand, my birds will have real feathers stuck on them. For tree trunks I will often use paperbark tree bark or thin slices of other types of tree bark from a dead tree trunk.
How long does it take me to make a book?
I could work much more quickly if my pictures were drawings or paintings! A book like ‘Where the forest meets the sea’ will take two or three years, but ‘One Hungry Spider’ only took me three months.
If you use real vegetation on your collages, how do you stop the vegetation from dying? I bathe the vegetation in a mixture of special chemicals for about a week. These chemicals preserve the vegetation and remove all the juices in the vegetation, which would in time destroy it. Then I finely spray the vegetation with paint to give it a permanent colour, before sticking it onto my collages.
Of all the books you’ve made, which is your favourite?
When a book is finally finished, I find it hard to think about it any more …I want to fill my head with something totally different, with a new book. My favourite book is the ‘new’ book I’m working on, still working out and trying to make better than the books I made before it!
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