Thank You, Forest

Johanna Venho
Illustrated by Sanna Pelliccioni
Translated by Jen Pulju Porter
From the forests of Finland, a thank you to nature for young readers in Oceania

Travelling all the way from the forests of Finland, Thank you, Forest is a unique book for children — a story in the form of a child's notebook.

Finnish author and poet Johanna Venho conjures up the world of Spruce, a young girl whose sanctuary is the forest near her house.

Then her parents and brother Zach start to look glum and talk about the forest being 'zoned' – apartments will be built there.

Spruce returns to the forest and ties notes to the trees as a type of

protest. The notes are seen by a mysterious boy with green eyes and twigs in his hair, who introduces himself as Gale.

Gale takes Spruce to see an underground lake deep in forest. Could this be secret they need to save the trees from destruction?

Thank you, Forest conjures up a sense of belonging in nature that is perfectly reflected in Sanna Pelliccioni’s notebook-style illustrations.

Finnish-American translator Jennifer Pulju Porter crafted the English text, and a grant from the Finnish Literature Exchange supported this book to be published in New Zealand, Australia and the South Pacific.

The authors

Johanna Venho is a leading author and poet based in Finland who has written for both adults and children. Among the many awards for her books, she received the Arvid Lydecken Prize for Children’s Literature in 2003.

Sanna Pelliccioni is a Helsinki-based illustrator and author whose work has been widely translated. She featured in the IBBY honour list 2022.

Jen Pulju Porter is a Finnish-American translator who has worked across a range of genres in her career. She currently lives in Colorado, USA.

© Scoop Media