WE, THE CURIOUS ONES

Stories and science have long had a push-pull relationship.

Long ago, Bauer notes, humans told creation myths of a flat Earth that was physically held up by various entities, and the people loved their stories dearly. But there have always been those for whom loving a story isn’t enough—these are the curious ones who go deeper, question, and come to new conclusions. And so, human knowledge—the story we tell ourselves to explain the nature of our world—evolved to conceive of Earth as a round planet at the center of the universe, then as a planet near the center circling the grandest star, and finally as just one of many planets in a seemingly infinite universe. The gorgeous, dreamy, watercolorlike artwork—paper dioramas backlit and photographed—provides a celestial vibe to the background, while more solid human figures are silhouetted in the foreground (occasionally, character details hint at nonspecific time periods and places). The small font size works as a metaphor for how small humans are in the universe, but it falls short of being kid-friendly. The spare story text tends toward the abstract. Though the lengthy afterword is quite dense, its specificity is refreshingly concrete, as it offers a more accessible chronicle of human understanding on various cosmic topics.

An aesthetically beautiful book with complex content that positions it more toward the classroom.