003: The Forest Giants - Chapter 23

This episode is dedicated to all my friends at the Gorge this weekend who are being good little ants and celebrating "Labor Dave Weekend" with Dave and the band at the most gorge-ous venue in the world! Remember, if you are too excited and can't get to sleep, this will do the trick!!! Thanks for listening to “Children's Bedtime Stories for Adults."

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Read by Ruma Tenbrink with the permission of Clete Barrett Smith:

If We Were Giants is an uplifting, sometimes harrowing, tale by rock star and environmental activist Dave Matthews and Clete Barrett Smith. Inspired by the cooperative behavior of bivouac ants, Matthews conceived a story of small people who stood up against overwhelming forces by working together, and co-author Smith built an entire world and cast of characters around that beginning. Protagonist Kirra, 10 years old for the first part of the story, 14 later, is racked with guilt because her own careless eagerness led an army of scary invaders called the Takers to discover and wipe out her family and all who lived in a carefully-hidden town inside a dormant volcano. Adopted by a family of peaceable, self-sufficient tree dwellers, she doesn't talk about her past, but when she's 14, the Takers threaten her new family, too. Between the massacres, the hunting scenes, the scary-looking villains, their shiny weapons, and the hand-to-hand combat, there's a lot of violence, but no gratuitous gore. There are lots of positive messages about family, friendship, courage, collaboration, cooperation, clever thinking, and living in harmony with nature and one another. Also about finding your true path and following it even when obstacles crop up.

This whole story came about because Dave Matthews observed the behavior of ants in the wild, and was inspired to see how it might apply elsewhere. Have you ever seen something in nature that made you look at something in your own life in a different way?

Inspired by ants, Dave Matthews and Clete Barrett Smith spin an exciting, harrowing, uplifting story of banding together to use cooperation -- and clever technology -- against predatory invaders. "If We Were Giants," muses a little kid, we could win against these ruthless foes. Fourteen-year-old tree-dweller Kirra, whose home has already been destroyed, has to rise above her survivor's (and other) guilt to help the people who've taken her in -- and maybe help them become giants for real.

• Authors: Dave Matthews, Clete Barrett Smith, Illustrator: Antonio Javier Caparo, Read by: Ruma Tenbrink