Earth wakes from her winter nap. She hears cawing crows. Sees spiders spinning their webs. Guides chimpanzees to their nest at night. Earth is the ocean and the underground tunnels. Mountains and tundra. In her games she becomes playful and wild and gentle and caring.
Earth is represented in the picture books by a little girl, but she is a child like no other. Spiderwebs thread around her fingers, and her hair spreads out into a dark night ocean. She can be tiny enough to ride an autumn leaf on the breeze or as vast as the hills and mountains. The reader follows her through a series of flaps and double page spreads and the overall effect of this book is breathtaking.
Illustrator Francesca Sanna is known for The Journey, a popular book among the teachers and librarians in my network. The illustrations in My Friend Earth are drawn in the same style but they fill the whole spread, allowing the reader to feel as if they have been drawn into the landscape. What I love about the illustrations is how they invite the reader to imagine what lies beyond. Whether it’s the sea or the round hills in the distance, there is a sense of land stretching on and on.
Earth’s journey takes the reader through the seasons but in a way that is rarely shown. Seasons are often introduced to young readers as an inevitablity. A fact to learn and recite. My Friend Earth dramatises seasonal change as the games of a young Mother Nature figure.
With the need for people to be in touch with nature becoming apparent and unignorable like never before, it is important for the subject to be introduced in a friendly and undaunting way. My Friend Earth is a delight and a masterpiece. It reminds us that natural spaces need our help and that, cared for well, they are the very greatest playground.
- My Friend Earth by Patricia MacLachlan and Francesca Sanna is available now from Chronicle Books. RRP. £12.99. (Provided for review)
