Life: The First Four Billion Years: The Story of Life from the Big Bang to the Evolution of Humans

I bought this for my daughter’s third grade curriculum. It’s packed with a lot more than so thought it would be. My only complaint is it’s too tall for any shelf on my bookshelves and it sticks out from the shelf even having to lay it across the top.

We love this book! The images are beautiful and my kids love to just look through it. We've learned so much from this book, it has so much good information. I was hesitant to buy it because it's a bit expensive for us but I'm so glad we did. We use it way more than I expected to in our homeschooling. The only drawback is that it's very large so it sometimes doesn't fit on our bookshelf but it's well worth the price and awkward bookshelf stacking ;)

Loved reading this with my 8yo. Rather wish they'd had a pronunciation guide for some of the harder words (euarchontoglires, anyone?) but the illustrations were beautiful and the information fascinating.

High quality and fascinating information.

This fold-able book is really engaging to students from grades 5 thru 8. It would be a great book for curious people with an interest in science, astronomy or history. It covers all the topics from the emergence of the star that would become the Earth’s sun, the ice ages, periods of mass extinction, and the biodiversity in our planet as of now. It goes into great detail on how everything we see in our day to day life came into existence. Each page has exhaustive diagrams and some pages include a fold-able addition. This feature makes it interactive and fun to read. The book is filled with knowledge and accurately describes every event that took place from four billion years ago. I gave this book 5 stars because the pictures and the interactive features made it entertaining while providing knowledge about what happened before we were born.Reviewed by Madhalasa I, 14 North Texas Mensa

I love the large format. The illustrations are full of energy. The information is good but I’m knocking off 1 star because there weren’t more cephalopods.

I purchased this book for my 12 year old and he thought it was far too easy. Its hard to find information on this time period for kids so I was hoping this would be a hit. He read it easily in an hour and never looked at it again

The Art in this picture book is amazing. It has a great range from artistically colored sketches to full on detailed action paintings. The fantastic art alone justifies the price of the book.The writing could use some help.It’s not “readable,” so much as it is like a list of vocabulary and animals along a timeline. It mentions the lineage of a handful of organisms of the given time period with the occasional interesting tidbit, and then skips on to the next time period millions of years later; and repeat. With the only main overriding theme being the branching lineage of the various organisms (focused mostly on animals), it’s a disservice that there’s no chart of the various families and genus to which is referred. You might as well put all the names of the various animals, genera, family, and orders in a hat, pull them out randomly, and read them out loud because despite the constant mention of them, they aren’t cohesively discussed in any absorbable way. You’re not going to read this book, set it down, and be able to remember the name of an interesting genus. Nothing is detailed in any memorable way.The last page is a glossary. The bottom of the glossary has a timeline that lists the eons and ages mentioned in the book, with small versions of the pages throughout the book attached to various points of the timeline. This is really the crux of the book, and should be massive. This book has double foldout pages in the front, and the small timeline in the back should actually be what’s on those foldout pages. Instead, the crux of the book is slipped in at the end like an afterthought.It really needs to own up to what it is. It’s a book of art. And it’s a reference book of the timeline of life on earth. Put that timeline upfront. Also, add a family tree of some sort that can be referenced each of dozens of times a genera or family is offhandedly compared. This would make the information more accessible.Despite all that, it is a good timeline, and the art is extraordinary, with some of the sketches begging to be attempted for those with any crafty inclinations.

excellent

Stunning, very large format book. Every school should have one. Every child should have sight of it.