Our Home, Our Only Home (Wondrous World)

Insistent verse by Bauer urges care for Earth as confident artwork from Diao emphasizes the planet’s fragility in this bracing picture book wake-up call. Similes keenly draw out humankind’s oneness with the natural world (“We are as alive,/ as night-sprouting mushrooms,/ as worms gobbling their way/ through the living soil”) even as text simultaneously narrates a story of how humans, with their “big brains” and their “trusted companion./ Fire,” have carelessly wrought destruction. The lines crescendo into an accounting of alarming consequences (“Wildfires kill./ Grasslands become desert./ Oceans die./ Plastics fill land and sea”) before suggesting ways that people can still change course. There’s a sandy tactile quality to soft-contoured digital renderings that aptly match the poem’s cumulative tone, which darkens before eventually brightening. Includes extensive back matter. Ages 4–8. (Mar.)