THE EVER-CHANGING EARTH

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.