Zeno Sworder's debut, This Small Blue Dot, a welcome-to-the-world picture book, is funny and serious, uplifting and humbling, visionary and earthy. And sometimes that's on just one page.
The book begins with a girl who looks and sounds about eight addressing a baby (an awfully cute stand-in for the reader): "Welcome to Earth./ There's a lot of strange stuff going on out there, but here are some of the things I've worked out so far." She proceeds to supply some facts and opinions, which are variously cosmic ("It turns out we're living on a small blue dot"), practical ("We only have this one, so we need to take care of it") and gustatory ("The best Indian dessert is a jalebi"). Her seemingly free-associated thoughts lead to a big finish: "Before us, there were our ancestors," the girl tells the baby. "You are the very newest in this long line of people.... What will you add to our story?"
At one point, the girl remarks that having a "wild imagination" lets people "create worlds with only a crayon and a piece of paper." For his part, Sworder uses both crayon and pencil to present the girl in a color-blasted orbit. She floats around in the galaxy, stands in a swirl of her favorite things ("Elephants and dung beetles! Pears and butterflies!") and dances while wearing the O in the word "POW" like a Hula-Hoop. She's depicted in black and white throughout This Small Blue Dot--as are, indeed, all the story's "real" elements--but readers may be too dazzled by her life-affirming good cheer to notice. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author