Our World Full of Wonder

Our World Full of Wonder

Jevita Nilson

Jess Racklyeft

CSIRO Publishing, 2024

32pp., hbk., RRP $A24.99

9781486318155

Floating in space, our world seems just a sphere of blue and green, but when you explore it, you discover there is a place where the night sky is a ballet of light; there is a place where an everlasting storm electrifies the sky; there is a place where a forest of stone creates an eerie shadow..

Our world is, indeed, full of amazing natural wonders and in this new release for younger independent readers, they are taken on a journey to just a dozen of them through the lyrical text and vibrant, come-hither illustrations.  Some like the “multi-coloured maze” where ocean creatures roam may be familiar but most will be unknown and as mysterious as their descriptions imply. Luckily, at the end there is a map and an explanation of where the journey has taken us from the North Pole (Aurora borealis,) to Australia (The Great Barrier Reef}, China (The Rainbow Mountains), Iceland (Reynisfiara Beach), back to Australia and Lake Hillier, the USA into the Sequoia National Park and half a dozen other natural phenomena, each inspiring the reader to know more and discover more about the landscapes and the landshapes of this planet. While teachers’ notes suggest ways to use the book in the classroom, it opens up all sorts of possibilities to research those places already identified or to add some extra pages of other features such as the dazzling blue flames that stream down mountains, the rainbow trees in a forest of green, or even the mud pools that boil like huge puddles of porridge, delving in to all sorts of science, geography, and history.

This is another awe-inspiring publication from CSIRO Publishing that encourages our young people to know more about their planet so they are more likely to protect and preserve it and it will be joined by a companion  Our World of Wild Wonders in early 2025 that has a focus on the creatures that inhabit it.