Q&A with Leo Daly, Author of The Giant and the Olive 

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Grief is an all-encompassing emotion that transcends age, generation, and culture. It is something none of us can escape, and while it is often excruciatingly painful, it can also hold moments of unexpected beauty. The Giant and the Olive by Leo Daly explores love, death, and grief with honesty and simplicity. Through Daly’s charming illustrations and tender storytelling, the book speaks to the universal human experience of love, loss, and remembrance.

Book Description: The giant couldn’t believe it. He had found the perfect Olive. So round, so shiny, so black—he must show all of his friends! So starts the journey of The Giant as he runs to share his happiness with everyone and the sorrow and joy that grows from his jubilation. 

Leo Daly, the son of iconic South African illustrator and writer Niki Daly, re-imagines the universal tale of loss, grief, and the joy of new beginnings. A simple but empathetic story born from the pain and loss of a miscarriage, this big-hearted, humorous story of a tall Giant in love with a little Olive examines our loves, passions, and the destruction of loss. A breath of fresh air that unflinchingly tackles our greatest fear. 

Like Where the Wild Things Are or Frog and Toad, A Lost Button, The Giant and the Olive tackles our fears and triumphs with humor and grace. A tale for any age from the kindergartner to the octogenarian.

Author Bio: Leo Daly is the son of iconic South African Illustrator and writer Niki Daly. He lives with his wife Magriet Brink in a tiny house by the sea on the southern tip of Africa. You can follow Leo and Magriet on Instagram at @we_are_creativehouse.

1. The Giant and the Olive is a children’s story inspired by the difficult experience of miscarriage. While born from something so personal, it unfolds as a universal tale of love and loss. Could you share a bit about your inspiration for the book, and how, just as the Giant’s grief bloomed into an olive tree, your own grief grew into this story? The story arrived fully formed while I was walking my dog in the mountains. This was shortly after my wife’s miscarriage. I was making my way to a bridge that crosses a pebbled stream, and The Giant and the Olive just popped into my head. It took about four years to complete the text and illustrations, in which time my daughter was born, and my father died. This all fed into the book in some direct and other less conscious ways.
   

2. There’s such a beautiful juxtaposition between the enormity of the great giant and the fragility of the tiny olive. What was your intention behind writing the characters as such opposites? My wife and I had been tracking the size of the baby, and we’d gone from a poppy seed to an orange seed, a sweet pea, a blueberry, a raspberry, and had reached an olive when we lost the little one. So that explains the olive. Somehow it was always going to be an olive and a giant. That’s the way it just popped into my head. Looking back, there’s clearly a message about how fragile new life is and how fragile love and happiness can be. Everyone, even the biggest and strongest of us, can be broken by the loss of our loves and hopes.

3. This story breaks down the experience of grief in a way that is understandable and approachable for children. What was it like to simplify such a complex concept to fit into the hands and hearts of little ones? 

   I didn’t try to simplify the concept because I don’t think love, death, and the grieving of loved ones are complex issues. I think the reason we confuse love and death for being complex is because we add layers of complication to the relationships we have that involve these issues. Children approach relationships in a far simpler and more honest way. And their approach to love, death, and grief is likewise more honest and simple. Every so often, my daughter will become quiet, and she’ll say that she’s sad because her grandfather died and she can’t speak to him anymore. That’s grief in its entirety.

   
   

4. Your parents, Jude and Niki Daly, are renowned children’s book authors and illustrators. Can you share a bit about the influence they had on you growing up, surrounded by stories in creation? What inspiration do you continue to draw from them?

   Because it was the only childhood I knew, it didn’t feel unusual. It was only much later, when I’d grown up enough to really see how other families lived, that I realised how lucky I was. The reality of creating art is that it takes a huge amount of discipline; it’s not flashes of inspiration and dancing around with paintbrushes. So, to grow up watching both of my parents working hard on their craft – seeing my father working through the night, not from enjoyment but from pressure – that was a great inspiration for me. For creative work to matter to the world, one has to see it through from its exciting first stages to its often quite grinding end.
   

5. You differ from many children’s authors in that you are also an illustrator. What was the process like of illustrating this book?

   It solidified the differences between telling a story with either pictures or words. I’ve written many children’s stories for illustrators, and when I do so, I’m always clear on exactly which visual details I want and also where there are areas for the illustrator to expand and enrich the story with their own creativity. It’s a skill to write a story for another person to illustrate and to do it well and respectfully. I’ve worked with writers who don’t understand the visual side of their stories, which can be a frustrating experience if they don’t allow the illustrator the freedom to make the pictures work. So this book was a joy. As the writer and the illustrator, there’s a reciprocation between the two fields: images fill out the feelings and action of the text, allowing one to cut back on descriptions and directives. Likewise, one can adjust the text after illustrating it to create areas of ambiguity and irony. It allows one to be less limited in either approach to storytelling, and I think this creates a book that’s more alive and respectful of its reader’s ability to play their part in the story themselves.
   

6. Was this book more challenging to illustrate than your others because of its personal nature, or did you find comfort in the process? I can engage with the story in an emotional way when reading it now, but while I was working on it, it was only about getting the text as good as I could for the reader to enjoy it. Illustration is very procedural. Once you’ve got your rough the way you want it, the rest is mostly execution. So no, the book wasn’t more challenging because it was personal. It was challenging because it was technically more demanding than previous work. I am, however, aware that there’s likely been quite a bit of psychological stuff playing out in the background while working on this book. I’m content for that to stay in the background.
   

7. The illustrations in The Giant and the Olive are charming, depicting a quaint countryside that draws readers in with warmth. At the start of the story, the sunshine and bright colors reflect the giant’s happiness, while in the midst of the giant’s grief, the pages shift to greys and muted tones, mirroring that sorrow. How intentional was this shift, and what role do you feel colors play in guiding young readers through the story? Everything in the illustrations of the book is intentional. Because the spreads take a long time to complete, there’s nothing in them that isn’t there for a reason. The countryside is taken from the beautiful rolling hills and valleys around Cheddar in Somerset, England. English winters are long, dark, and cold. They bring with them a depressive state that creeps into you. But the springs there are incredible. The entire countryside explodes into colour again. You have to go through long dark winters to have springs like those.

8. I really appreciated how the giant had to pass through many seasons of grief before finding hope again. This reflects the reality of mourning and shows children that while sadness can last a long time, there is something waiting on the other side of it. What do you hope readers will take away from the giant’s journey from grief to hope, and how does it reflect your own personal experience? I hope readers will understand that grief isn’t something that you can get away from or shape to your liking. Grief is very big, and it’s big because of how much we loved the person we lost. That person can never come back, and so we’ll grieve them forever. For most people, the grief you feel the day after the loss is the way you’ll feel for the rest of your life. The shock subsides, but not the grief. And it’s okay to feel sad about it for the rest of your life. There will come a time, and it will happen one morning without any reason, that you’ll feel that you can accept this sadness as part of you and that by being mindful of it and caring for it and allowing it to shape you, you are honouring the person you lost.
   

9. At the end of the story, the olive tree begins to grow from the giant’s tears. How did you arrive at this imagery, and what does it mean to you?

   It’s a well-worn archetype that I hope I’ve earned by the build-up to it, but that’s up to the readers to decide. In the very last illustration of the book, the Giant is absent. He has passed, and the olive that he had mourned has become a great tree that outlives him. Without the olive, the Giant would not have grown, and without the Giant, the olive would never have become a tree. Some keen-eyed readers will notice that in the last double spread, there is a tiny, single olive growing from one of the branches.