Once upon a time there was and will be so much more

This Swedish import asks children to ponder time on a mammoth and ever shifting scale. The book's first half, with sweeping, panoramic vistas, peers backward, beginning with "billions of years ago" when the planet was formed. In the next spread, readers see dinosaurs millions of years back, then humans migrating "hundreds of thousands of years ago." The book continues shifting forward in huge increments of time until it arrives at "a year ago," when it starts shifting forward by a month, a week, a day, an hour, and a minute--zooming in on a particular house and family--until it reaches the present moment, in which readers see a shooting star and text that reads "Now! Make a wish!" With each page turn, the border of clean white space around the illustrations grows in size, thereby shrinking the view. The book's second half looks back out and direct questions at readers in a second-person voice: "Where will you be in the afternoon?" The borders shrink and the illustrations increase in size as readers are asked to ponder their futures, from tomorrow to next month to next year and so on. Here, questions asked of readers are inviting and as grand in scale as the vistas they're paired with: "What will you look back on when you're old?" and "What do you wish for the future?" Humans are often depicted at a distance from readers but appear to represent a mixture of races. (This book was reviewed digitally.) Ambitious and thought-provoking. (Picture book. 5-10) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.