THIS PRETTY PLANET

Chapin and Forster’s unofficial Earth Day anthem gets a picture-book treatment.

A song that once woke astronauts in space becomes a story told on double-page spreads through White’s whimsical illustrations. A brown-skinned girl with Afro-puff pigtails, a brown-haired White boy, and a white rabbit take off on a bed with a star-patterned coverlet for a dreamlike journey. Carried by a balloon, their flight begins in fantasy. They land on a mushroom planet and admire fanciful constellations. A rocket takes them into space so they can see the spinning Earth. On their return, things are even more surreal. The Earth becomes a spinning record in a landscape with a sleeping lion and dinosaurs. The rabbit rides a dinosaur and, later, helps build one out of snow. Once again carried by the balloon, they float over the river of history, which gradually becomes more dingy and acquires trash. Suddenly the “pretty planet” is a smoke-filled industrial dump. The rabbit weeps. But they set to and clean up (shown effectively in a sequence of panels). Once again, the world is “a holy place.” Appropriately for a picture-book narrative, they end up back in bed. Their room is filled with reminders of their journey. The many allusive details in the illustrations will make adults smile and keep child readers coming back for more. The song is included, scored once for keyboard or guitar and once as a round. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-18-inch double-page spreads viewed at 85.5% of actual size.)

Engaging and true to the message.