So Far, So Good! Earth! My First 4.54 Billion Years by Stacy McAnulty

HI! MY NAME IS EARTH.

SOME PEOPLE CALL ME GAIA, THE WORLD, THE THIRD PLANET FROM THE SUN, THE BLUE MARBLE.

YOU CAN CALL ME MR. AWESOME.

The Earth is not even the biggest among his siblings, the eight various planets (and their family pet, Pluto), but Mr. Awesome has a unique and fascinating history. And that history is the awesome story told in Stacy McNulty's Earth! My First 4.54 Billion Years (Our Universe) (Henry Holt, 2017). There is a lot of history to cover in 4.54 billion years, and author McNulty begins with Mr. Awesome's movements. Earth was born to move, so to speak, and he or she spins and revolves in the daily and annual cycles which have some major effects upon its surface.

But the big story is Earth's personal history.

I WAS BORN 4.54 BILLION YEARS AGO. I DON'T REMEMBER, BUT I HAVE BEEN TOLD I WAS A HOT MESS! EXPLOSIVE! GASSY! CRANKY!

THEN I GOT COOL. REALLY WET! FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS. I'M NOT KIDDING. THOUSANDS!

I WAS LONELY! MY ISLANDS MUST HAVE BEEN LONELY TOO. THEY GOT TOGETHER AND MADE CONTINENTS.

PANGEA!

Author Stacy McAnulty takes elementary readers through Earth's past in a breezy conversational style, made understandable in the jolly anthropomorphic illustrations of award-winning artist David Litchfield, as plant and animal life develops--hitting the high points of earth history, including dinosaurs, asteroid collisions, major volcanic events, ice ages, extinctions, and the emergence of homo sapiens. There are plenty of curriculum connections and a solid appendix with bibliography and sources to prepare middle readers for scholarly research reports along the way. With a suitably thorough account of the major elements of earth's geological and biological history in an easy reading style, this should be a first choice for school and public libraries. "Terrifically entertaining," as Publishers Weekly puts it in their starred review.