The ever-changing earth

Earth's mutations provide shape to this meandering portrait of the "ever-changing" planet and the many life-forms it has supported over time. An East Asian--presenting, dinosaur-loving child named Kûn anchors the tale, which opens with, in the place where Kûn now lives, the long-ago "wild beat of pterosaur wings," the mountain-shaking roar of T. rex, and an asteroid that silences almost everything. Rewinding to Earth's beginnings, awe-inspired text tours readers through the event that created the planet's moon, the appearance of the first single-celled life, and a seemingly endless winter that leaves the globe "spinning in space like a huge snowball." Informative passages about Earth's molten core lead to a description of the northern lights ("Particles streaming from the sun collide with the magnetic field generated by Earth's core"), regarded by a pale-skinned girl named Solveig who floats in a pool--alone, but also "connected" to Kûn, who remains in a garden half a world away. Soft-edged digital artwork fills pages with visions of planetary grandeur--from sublime cliffs to opaque ocean depths--aptly reflecting the prose. Ages 4--8. (Apr.)

A brief meditation on our planet's long and generally violent history over geologic epochs with suitably big, dramatic illustrations. Following a distant glimpse of a small Asian child named Kûn pedaling through a modern landscape past outsize ghostly images of turbulent waters and immense prehistoric creatures, Baker-Smith rewinds to a view of the dinosaurs' cataclysmic demise. He then goes further back to depict the massive interplanetary collision that produced our moon and, after millions of years of raging storms, led to the appearance of teeming life in unusual forms that evolved over eons into those of today. Meanwhile, through ages of ice and volcanic fire, fractured bits of crust float over Earth's roiling, fiery insides to create recognizable continents. One continent links dinosaur lover Kûn, feeding the birds that are their descendants in a stylized Chinese garden, with another, white-presenting child named Solveig, who, thousands of miles away, gazes up in wonder at a majestically sculptured mountain of ice and a spectacular sky show of northern lights. Though the children are far apart, the author cogently writes, "everywhere on Earth is connected to everywhere else." A grand spectacle. (Informational picture book. 6-9) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.