Little Land
by Diana Sudyka; illus. by the author
Preschool, Primary    Little, Brown    48 pp.
4/23    9780316301763    $18.99

This impassioned picture-book call to action for environmental stewardship opens with the image of a contemporary child tending “a little bit of land.” After a spread that lays out what the land might have looked like at three different stages in the prehistoric past, we see it as it could have looked with the first humans treading upon it, a time when, following natural disasters such as fire and an ice age, it always found a way to “begin anew.” Sudyka’s lush spreads burst with a symphony of colors; graceful, swirling lines depict balance, such as a verdant wordless spread with bison, cranes, and other creatures sharing space. When the book shifts to the time when more and more humans move in, they no longer think of the land “except when they wanted to take from it.” The palette turns from primarily vibrant greens to the dismal grays of vehicle exhaust. Two visually striking spreads show the damage humans have caused (pollution and the crowding out of flora and fauna) with the first using series of diagonal lines that radiate from the book’s bottom gutter, separating the spread into wedge-shaped panels. The panels on the recto appear upside down; the following double-page spread features an inverted full-bleed image of a pollution-clogged city showing how environmental degradation “seemed unstoppable.” Images return to right-side-up and the vivid colors reappear when a group of children stop to “look closely, and listen, too,” tending the land with care. Back matter touches on the different epochs represented in the story and provides resources for further reading.

From the March/April 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.