Meryl Streep recorded the audiobook of Big Tree! I’ve been a huge fan of hers forever, and to be honest it was always her voice I had in my head as I worked on the story. From Sophie Zawistowski to Julia Child, from Miranda Priestly to Margaret Thatcher, each character she creates is totally unique and profoundly alive. Spending the day with her in the recording booth and listening to her summon nearly twenty-five new characters in Big Tree, including the Earth itself, is one of the great thrills of my life. I can’t wait for everyone to hear.
Meryl Streep says, “With Big Tree, Brian Selznick has created a profound and lovely book. His quiet message—that even the smallest among us can do something to save the world, and that we’re all connected—is just what’s needed for the moment in which we find ourselves.”
Produced by Paul Gagne, with sound design by Steve Syarto and extraordinary music by Ernest Troost, the audiobook of Big Tree is “...both an adventure and a meditation on time, given texture by Streep, whose distinct characterizations pop against her soothing narration,” writes AudioFile
About Meryl Streep:
For almost 45 years, Meryl Streep has continued to bring a varied and vivid array of characters to life in a career that has cut its own unique path from the theater through film and television. Educated in the New Jersey public school system through high school, Streep graduated cum laude from Vassar College and received her MFA with Honors from Yale University. She began her professional life on the New York stage, where she quickly established her signature versatility and verve as an actor. Within three years of graduation, she made her Broadway debut, won an Emmy for “Holocaust,” and received her first Oscar nomination for “The Deer Hunter.” She has since won three Academy Awards, and in 2018, in a record that is unsurpassed, she earned her 21st Academy Award nomination for her role as Katharine Graham in “The Post.” Streep received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 2008, and the 2010 National Medal of Arts, a Kennedy Center Honor, and in 2014 the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In addition to her illustrious career as an actor, Streep has pursued her interest in the environment through her work with Mothers and Others, a consumer advocacy group that she co-founded in 1989 under the aegis of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Mothers and Others worked for ten years to promote sustainable agriculture, establish new pesticide regulations, and ensure the availability of organic and sustainably grown local foods. Over the years, she has supported the work of many non-profit organizations in the areas of the environment including The Climate Emergency Fund, human rights and social justice, Women for Women International, among many others. Streep and husband Don Gummer are the parents of a son and three daughters, and proud grandparents of five children under three years of age.