Right Where You Are Now: Painting our Planet’s History

In the crowded aisles of New York ComicCon, a quiet book called out to me. My eye was drawn to the painterly, slightly retro style, and as I thumbed through the book, I fell in love with all of the paintings that let kids know about the wild ride our planet has been on for the past 250 million years or so.

Right Where You Are Now, written by Lisa Montierth and illustrated by Ashley Burke, isn’t your run of the mill picture book. On each spread, a location familiar to kids is established followed by a vivid description of what once was.

Right where you are now, night is here. The yellow moon shines down on a quiet house. Soon, everyone will be sleeping. But once…

There were no houses. There was only a salty sea. Fish lizards called ichthyosaurs and carnivorous plesiosaurs swam through coral reefs. Warm rains fell into the shallow waters. The world looked very different, right where you are now.

Where icy mountains stand, volcanos once spouted out lava. Where now a bluebird nests in an oak tree, megacerops lumbered through the woodlands. Tall skyscrapers shoot out of land that was once underwater. The book emphasizes how the earth is ever-changing and invites the reader to imagine what could come next.

It’s not the easiest book to read aloud, unless merychippus and nimravid roll off your tongue. Fortunately there’s a visual dictionary in the back, complete with pronunciations. There’s also a description of each animal or event named in the book.

Check out the book trailer for Right Where You Are Now. While it features little of the book, it captures the spirit of how alive the book feels. Also, it’s one of the best book trailers I’ve seen. My 22-month-old watches it daily.

Right Where You Are Now is a great book for the young and curious.

I received a review copy of this book.