Many: The Diversity of Life on Earth

by Nicola Davies, Emily Sutton (Illustrator)

Overview

“Sutton’s spectacular illustrations . . . take the concept of ‘many’ to the extreme. . . . Davies has a keen sense of how to represent science for beginners.” —The Horn Book (starred review)

The more we study the world around us, the more living things we discover every day. The planet is full of millions of species of plants, birds, animals, and microbes, and every single one—including us—is part of a big, beautiful, complicated pattern. When humans interfere with this pattern, by polluting the air and oceans or cutting down too many forests, animals and plants begin to disappear. What sort of world would it be if Earth went from having many types of living things to having just one? Now in paperback, this beautiful follow-up to the award-winning Tiny Creatures: The World of Microbes delivers an inspiring look at the extraordinary diversity of Earth’s inhabitants—and the importance of their preservation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536245875
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	09/30/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	30 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

About the Author

“I was very small when I saw my first dolphin,” says zoologist Nicola Davies, recalling a seminal visit with her father to a dolphin show at the zoo. Enchanted at the sight of what she called the “big fish” jumping so high and swimming so fast, she determined right then that she would meet the amazing creatures again “in the wild, where they belonged.” And indeed she did—as part of a pair of scientific expeditions, one to Newfoundland at the age of eighteen and another to the Indian Ocean a year later. In Wild About Dolphins, Nicola Davies describes her voyages in a firsthand account filled with fascinating facts and captivating photographs of seven species of dolphins in action.

Nicola Davies’s seemingly boundless enthusiasm for studying animals of all kinds has led her around the world—and fortunately for young readers, she is just as excited about sharing her interests through picture books. Another of the zoologist’s offering puts a decidedly quirky twist on her years of experience: Poop: A Natural History of the Unmentionable is a fun, fact-filled guide to the fascinating world of poop across species. “As a zoologist, you are never far from poop!” the writer explains. “I’ve baked goose poop in an oven with my dinner, looked at bat poop under the microscope, and had my T-shirt stained pink with blue-whale poop. I was obviously fated to write this book.”

The exceptional combination of Nicola Davies’s zoological expertise and her first-rate children’s writing is apparent in her remarkable catalog of award-winning titles. Her first book with Candlewick Press, Big Blue Whale, was hailed by American Bookseller as an “artfully composed study” offering “language exactly appropriate for four- to seven-year-olds and precisely the right amount of information.” In One Tiny Turtle, Nicola Davies’s clear, compelling narrative follows the life of the rarely seen loggerhead turtle, which swims the oceans for thirty years and for thousands of miles in search of food, only to return, uncannily, to lay her eggs on the very beach where she was born. The author’s next book, Bat Loves the Night, is a tenderly written ode to a much-misunderstood flying mammal, the pipistrelle bat. And Surprising Sharks—winner of a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor—contains unexpected facts about another one of the planet’s most infamous animals.

When she is not off on scientific expeditions, Nicola Davies lives in a cottage in Somerset, England, where she is lucky enough to have pipistrelle bats nesting in her roof.

Editorial Reviews

10/09/2017
With a streamlined narrative and intricate, folk-art images evoking Mary Blair–illustrated Golden Books, Davies and Sutton, the team behind Tiny Creatures: The World of Microbes, sound an alarm about species extinction. Employing the concept of one versus many, the book asks, “How many different kinds of living things are there on our planet?” The answer is “Many!” and busy scenes of flora and fauna showcase an abundance of life across diverse ecosystems. Other spreads resemble pages from a field guide, with labeled vignettes of life forms, such as the SpongeBob fungus. The positive vibe ends, however, with a spread showing the various ways humans are destroying habitats. A redheaded girl—the book’s “tour guide,” who has admired and taken notes on wildlife—appears solo and sad on the last page, with the text warning, “We could not keep living on Earth if we had to count down instead of up from many to one.” Though the conclusion is dire (and no solutions to overpopulation are offered), this early entrée into environmental interconnectedness and stewardship should launch plenty of discussion. Ages 5–8. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Davies has a keen sense of how to represent science for beginners. Sentences as sensible and jargon-free as “Sometimes, things that look different are really the same…and things that look the same are really different” contain deep mathematical and biological concepts that include ecosystems and interdependence, relative quantities, biomes, food webs, and the classification of living things.
—The Horn Book (starred review)

Writer and zoologist Davies celebrates the "big, beautiful, complicated pattern" that is life on Earth...A pair of spreads show first a lushly populated rain forest and then the same area with some trees cut down and animals leaving; the third in the sequence shows a museum exhibit of extinct species. We can't survive as one. A sobering message presented gloriously.
—Kirkus Reviews

With a streamlined narrative and intricate, folk-art images evoking Mary Blair–illustrated Golden Books, Davies and Sutton, the team behind Tiny Creatures: The World of Microbes, sound an alarm about species extinction...this early entrée into environmental interconnectedness and stewardship should launch plenty of discussion.
—Publishers Weekly

Jam-packed watercolor illustrations fill most pages of this picture book that details the diversity of plants and animals around the earth...This book would supplement curriculum about the environment, and could be used as an activity book for preschoolers.
—School Library Connection Online

Many: The Diversity of Life on Earth is especially appropriate for young children and offers numerous possibilities for learning about colorful plants and animals...it is sure to be enjoyed by nature lovers of all ages.
—BookPage

A call to all young children to notice the rich diversity of life, its interconnectedness, and humanity’s role in its devolution...Gravity, hope, and joy are all intertwined in Davies’s and Sutton’s presentation. The quality of the watercolors and text make this an appealing choice for large libraries that serve young children.
—School Library Journal

Living things form a pattern that is ‘big, beautiful, complicated,’ writes Nicola Davies in ‘Many: The Diversity of Life on Earth’ (Candlewick, 40 pages, $15.99), a picture-book appreciation of the natural world for children ages 3-6.
—The Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher

11/01/2017
PreS-Gr 1—A call to all young children to notice the rich diversity of life, its interconnectedness, and humanity's role in its devolution. Representing readers' potential to understand these concepts is a red-headed, freckled, pig-tailed girl taking it all in. She uses binoculars to see details in a jungle canopy, wears scuba gear to get close to ocean life, and takes notes wherever she stands, clipboard and pen in hand. The brief text lacks animal identification on most every page, naming only a few of the individual fora and fauna except for two spreads, one introducing new species and the other identifying extinct ones. On a serious note, young observers glimpse destruction of habitat and life and the ecological damage by farming, fishing, industrial, and construction practices. Gravity, hope, and joy are all intertwined in Davies's and Sutton's presentation. VERDICT The quality of the watercolors and text make this an appealing choice for large libraries that serve young children.—Nancy Call, Santa Cruz Public Libraries, Aptos, CA

School Library Journal