The wilderness is in Jenna’s blood. Her Pap was the first Black park ranger at Sturbridge Reservation, and she practically knows the Owlet Survival Handbook by heart. But she’s never encountered a creature like the one that took her best friend Reese. Her parents don’t believe her; the police are worthless, following the wrong leads; and the media isn’t connecting the dots between Reese’s disappearance and a string of other attacks. Determined to save her friend, Jenna joins a new local scout troop, and ventures back into the woods.
When the troop stumbles across suspicious signs: huge human-like footprints near the camp, scratch marks on trees, and ominous sounds from the woods, Jenna worries that whatever took Reese is back to take her too. Can she trust her new scout leader? And will her new friend Norrie—who makes her laugh and reminds her so much of Reese—believe her?
After the unthinkable happens, the scouts, armed with their wits and toiletries, band together to fight the monster and survive the night.
Do you believe in Bigfoot?
In the parlance of one of my very favorite TV shows, “The X-Files,” I want to believe.
There’s a documentary on HULU called “Sasquatch,” and well…I didn’t exactly love it. If you’ve seen it, you’ll know that it just didn’t quite turn out to be the documentary it was supposed to be? Kinda.
But there was one moment in there that really stuck with me (and I’m not going to go find the direct quote or anything). A man being interviewed is addressing the notion of like…come on, if there was really a Bigfoot (or many Bigfoots) lumbering around in the woods, wouldn’t we have spotted them by now? Like how, in this modern age of cell phone cameras & drones, could these big creatures actually stay hidden from human eyes?
And the guy’s response was that, if you really think along those lines, then you clearly have never experienced the forests in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. He’s basically saying that to the people who truly know the area…they believe it’s possible, because they know just how impossibly vast & dense these forests are. Something could stay well hidden, no doubt.
So yeah, that notion has stayed with me & kept a sense of wonder alive in me.
I feel like I’ve read a Bigfoot novel somewhere along the way, but if I have, it’s escaping me at the moment. At any rate, Ally Russell’s IT CAME FROM THE TREES is certainly the first middle grade Bigfoot novel I’ve read and I had a blast with this!
This book has some genuinely creepy moments & would definitely have me second-guessing any planned camping trips (I have never had any planned camping trips, thankfully!) And oh! The book is set in Sturbridge, MA, which is about 45 mins away from where I live…so cool!
On her last day of a three-day camping trip with the Cottontail Scouts, Jenna’s best friend Reese is taken by a large creature in the woods. It’s Jenna & Reese’s first experience with the Cottontail Scouts and it…wasn’t going great to begin with. As the only two Black girls in the troop, they experience some not-too-subtle racism at the hands of the toxic Troop Leader Winslow.
But then things take an even more nightmarish turn and Reese is gone.
Jenna returns home for a bit, broken & so sad, but she remains convinced of several things:
-Reese is alive
-Something big & furry took her
-She (Jenna) is the only one determined enough to actually find Reese.
So after a short break back home, she joins a more inclusive scout troop, the Owelets, and heads back into the woods to rescue her friend.
Terror ensues.
BUT ALSO FRIENDSHIP! Jenna slowly begins to warm up to a girl named Norrie on the trip, which (slightly) helps ease some of her tension. It’s almost as if she is so single-minded in her purpose that anything else is a distraction. And also too, I think Jenna feels a bit like forming new friendships is a betrayal to her friendship with Reese. Jenna is really going through it on this second trip in the woods, so it was nice to see a friendlier group of people in the troop for her to be able to count on!
I had a blast reading this! There’s a slight mixed-media vibe happening here, with excerpts from blogs & scouting manuals & new articles, etc. Just some fun additions to the overall story.
And like I said, there are some seriously hair-raising moments in this one! Russell is great at dropping the reader into a scene…you can feel the stifling heat all around you, the fabric of the tent surrounding you, the enormous shadow moving across the surface of the tent as you desperately try to keep quiet.
Oof, yeah. This was such a great read! Looking forward to reading more from Ally Russell in the future!
Grimdark Dad 