By Oliver Jeffers
Oliver Jeffers made this for his newborn son, and it reads like it: a warm, funny tour of the whole planet and everyone on it. It's become a favorite new-baby gift — a parent showing a brand-new person around the world they've just arrived on.
Jeffers wrote this in the first weeks of his son's life, and the book moves the way you would if you were introducing the world to a baby. Here's Earth from way out in space. Here's land, here's sea, here's the sky in between. Here's your body, and everyone has one, in every shape and color. Here are the animals — some you can ride, some you really shouldn't. Running under all of it is one gentle refrain: the world is big, but we're all in it together, so be kind and look after each other. The paintings are gorgeous, and nothing in here is loud or scary.
It earns its place when a child bumps up against something huge — a new sibling on the way, first questions about space or death or just how big everything is — and you want that bigness to land warm instead of frightening. Jeffers doesn't talk down and doesn't scare; he makes the whole planet feel like somewhere you belong. Some anxious children settle right into it, because its answer to how enormous the world is turns out to be a small, calm one: ask for help, and be kind, and we've got each other. Plenty of grown-ups end up keeping a copy for themselves too.