WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 61Review_CHILDREN’S
★ My Friend Earth
Patricia MacLachlan, illus. by Francesca Sanna. Chronicle, $17.99
(44p) ISBN 978-0-8118-7910-1
In this tender picture book, an anthropomorphized Earth,
portrayed as a cherubic brown-skinned giant with long hair,
makes her way through the seasons. After waking from a win-
tertime snooze, “My friend Earth” carries out various duties:
nurturing habitats (“She tends the prairie
where sun-dappled wild horses run/
through grasses that swish against their
legs,” MacLachlan writes in lyrical lines)
and assisting animals (“She guides the
chimpanzee to her night rest”). Flaps and
die-cut shapes create a dynamic reading
experience; over one page turn, they
show Earth moving from sleeping to waking to peering
through a colorful bramble. Surreal illustrations by Sanna,
rendered in pencil, ink, and digital painting, use saturated
hues—sages, teals, and rusts—to show Earth as both cause and
effect: she becomes and rides on the wind, rains on and then
wrings out sopping trees, before finally “waiting” for another
spring. A poetic entrée into Earth’s modes rendered with an
appreciation for natural details. Ages 3–5. (Feb.)★ One Little Bag: An Amazing Journey
Henry Cole. Scholastic Press, $18.99 (48p) ISBN 978-1-338-35997-8
Cole’s story follows a paper bag from its forest origins to a
factory, to a boy’s kitchen table, and into adulthood. At first,
the brown lunch sack bears a single red heart, crayoned on by
the child’s father, in closely worked ink spreads. As the boy
grows, the bag comes with him—it’s stuffed with sheet music
as his guitar playing attracts the attention of a young woman
with a guitar of her own. She adds another red heart to the sack;
a page later, it’s witness to a marriage proposal. A baby arrives:
a third heart. Years later, the bag’s final use involves saying
goodbye to the new child’s grandfather with a sweet memorial.
By elevating the life of an ephemeral object to the time scale of
love across generations, Cole nudges readers to take a second
look at the things they throw away. An author’s note describes
how Earth Day prodded Cole to reuse the same paper lunch bag
for years. Final art not seen by PW. Ages 4–8. (Apr.)Clem and Crab
Fiona Lumbers. Andersen Press USA, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-5415-
9619-1
In her solo debut, Lumbers gently yet effectively exposes a
contemporary environmental crisis through a concerned girl’s
perspective. At the seashore, while Clem combs the tide pools
for “treasures that washed ashore, but also the things that other
people had left behind,” she is pleasantly distracted by a crabthat seems to watch her, but then disappears. Sorting the items
she’s collected into “one pile to put back, the other to be recy-
cled,” Clem finds the crab tangled in a plastic bag and sets it
free. In the tale’s only credibility strain, she notices on the bus
home that the crab has crawled into her pant hem. Before finally
returning it to the sea, she brings her crustacean friend to school,
where she tells her classmates about the rescue and shows them
a collage she made with the plastic waste she retrieved. Though
the story’s urgent message is modern, Lumbers’s images of the
girl and her peers are timeless, evoking simplicity and warmth
and resulting in a rewarding fusion. Ages 4–9. (Mar.)When the Earth Shook
Lisa Lucas, illus. by Laurie Stein. Tilbury House, $17.95 (36p)
ISBN 978-0-88448-808-8
An anthropomorphized look at climate change finds stars
Alya and Atik with one job: twinkling above Earth, where
plants, animals, and eventually humans look up to them. But
when humans pollute Earth and obscure the stars, the duo grows
upset, shouting “STOP! You are making it impossible for us
to do our job.” Earth, who already feels ill, begins to sob and
shake. Though a king orders Earth to cease, it’s the actions of
Axiom, a girl with a megaphone and an impassioned speech,
that ultimately help “make Earth feel better” (one spread shows
figures recycling and hanging out laundry), allowing Alya and
Atik to be seen once more. Dark-toned art, done in pastels on
recycled paper, conveys a pressing sense of doom. Though the
murky, theatrical plot offers few clear takeaways, Axiom’s
speech, presented as an endnote, provides real-world methods
for “Earth Warriors” to make a difference. Ages 5–8. (Mar.)If We Were Gone:
Imagining the World Without People
John Coy, illus. by Natalie Capannelli. Millbrook, $19.99 (32p)
ISBN 978-1-5415-2357-9
In this disturbingly beautiful dystopian meditation, Coy uses
direct and dreamy language, encouraging readers to imagine a
world without humans—“Pipes would burst/ and pavement
buckle.” The net effect imagined is undeniably beneficial: “The
air would become cleaner/ with each rainfall.// Plants and
animals would grow wild/ and forests and jungles expand.”
Coy’s point: “People need water to live./ We need air to breathe./
We need plants to survive./ But do they need us?// Maybe
not.” Capannelli’s watercolors show crumbling structures,
rising waters, and animals merrily scavenging, beady eyes
peering out from broken computers. A closing note states
that “virtually 99.999 percent of all life on the planet has
gone extinct” and calls readers to action: “This is the planet
you are going to live on. What will you do to protect it?”
Ages 5–10. (Mar.)Our One and Only
Narrative picture books inspire Earth-friendly action.