Review by Booklist Review
Beginning with Earth's formation 4.57 billion years ago, the evolution of life on this planet along with the evolution of the planet itself is tracked over the eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages, beginning with microscopic organisms and ending with the road to us, around 2.6 million years ago. The formidable trim size allows for depictions of both the grandeur of nature and the details of biology, both of which Baker-Smith captures in sweeping cosmic paintings and detailed pencil sketches, among other media. An admirable job has been done organizing the wide-ranging data into manageable two-page sections: time lines are used early on to ground the reader, and each page is labeled by the appropriate period. Jenkins' text is remarkable in its comprehensiveness, but the result of such a macroscopic lens is a broad chronology of facts rather than an engaging narrative. The average reader may not make it through the at-times dense, vocab-heavy information (back matter includes a glossary), but budding biologists, taxonomists, and natural historians will marvel at this beautifully illustrated accumulation of knowledge.--Ronny Khuri Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Beginning with the big bang, Jenkins chronicles significant events in the formation of the universe as we know it today, including the emergence of the star that would become the Earth's sun, the ice ages, periods of mass extinction, and expanding biodiversity. Baker-Smith's lush, oversize spreads depict planetary events and life-forms, from early arthropods to the rhinoceroslike mammal Arsinoitherium. The story of Earth and its many species concludes with the introduction of early primates--millions of years before the arrival of humans. Throughout, Jenkins expresses the humbling truth of humanity's relative insignificance: "Each one of us can trace our ancestors... to one of those tiny archaean cells that first began processing energy and making copies of itself nearly four billion years ago," the author concludes. Ages 10--14. (Sept.)
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Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 5--8--This beautiful book begins with a large fold-out page where living things, or organisms, are described down to cellular detail, along with an explanation of how life is classified by scientists, a review of rocks and fossils, and a brief time line of the first two billion years of life on Earth. After that, the book is divided into chapters corresponding to each geologic era from Proterozoic (2.5 billion to 542 million years ago) to the more "modern" Neogene Era (2.3 to 2.6 million years ago) in which many of the first ape species evolved. Each chapter features a short summary of life that appeared during that time period along with Baker-Smith's lovely sketches of the plants and animals that lived on the planet. The color drawings that begin each chapter fade into black-and-white pages with more detailed sketches. Each plant or animal is labeled along with its approximate size in both imperial and metric units. The book concludes with a glossary and abbreviated geologic time line. The language style is appropriate for middle school students, especially for those budding scientists who are enamored with Earth's earliest days. VERDICT Libraries who choose to purchase this book will want to make sure they have shelves to accommodate its large trim size (11 7/16" x 13 7/8" in) or create space on a table where it can be easily browsed. A useful purchase for libraries that want to spruce up their science nonfiction collection in a giant way.--Anne Jung-Mathews, Plymouth State University, NH
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Grand in scope, art, and trim size, a panoramic survey of this planet's residents from earliest prokaryotes to our species' first direct ancestors.Opening with an enormous double gatefold headed "Here Comes the Sun," Jenkins' account begins at the beginning (when, as he puts it, "something happened") and ends with the split 5 or 6 million years ago that led to chimpanzees down one line and humans down the other. In between, it presents the history of living things within a framework of extinction events, ice ages, and other climate-related shifts. Into this admirably coherent view of current thinking about our planet's deep past he also crams technical nomenclature ("Among the new kinds of animals on land were different synapsid and sauropsid amniotes"), which, along with all the equally polysyllabic identifiers accompanying the illustrations, should delight young sesquipedalians. Baker-Smith's paintings, a gore-free mix of full-spread color scenes and sepia or graphite galleries of individual figures, show off his versatilitysome exhibiting close attention to fine detail, others being nearly abstract, and all (particularly an armored marine Dunkleosteus on the attack and a Tyrannosaurus that is all teeth, feathery mane, and wild eyes) demonstrating a real flair for drama. Design trumps legibility for a few passages that are printed in smaller type on dark or variegated backdrops.A family story over 4 billion years in the making in a suitably ambitious format. (glossary, timelines) (Nonfiction. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
