The World to Come
Written by Robert MacFarlane & Johnny Flynn ● Illustrated by Emily Sutton
Verdict:
A poetic, hopeful, and riotously illustrated rumination on the seasons of nature and the seasons of life. Touching for children and parents alike.
What is it about?
A father and his young son take a walk in nature and contemplate the world. They see the trees and flowers, animals and birds, the ocean and a storm. In it all, they ponder what good things are still to come as they grow up and grow older.
Our take:
The beauty of this book lies in the way it asks us to observe, contemplate, appreciate, and partake in the natural world, and through that, in our own lives and futures. It’s a hopeful book, and a lovely one to look at, richly illustrated with riotously colorful and textured drawings. The storyline is poetic, with some rhyme and the repetition of a chorus. And it could be used as a prompt for how to take walks in nature, questions to ask ourselves, and how to make little rhymes from what we see and feel: "Gull cry; still sky."
Perfect fit for:
This book can be enjoyed by anyone, young or old. All of us can be edified by contemplating nature, whether directly or through a book, whether we live in cities or deep in the countryside. All of us can be delighted by energetic swirls of lines and dashes of colored washes that show us how bright our world really is. And most of us can go out into whatever nature is around us to listen, see, notice, contemplate, and ask questions, to make poetry and pictures, and to watch ourselves grow in the world, with the trees and the flowers, the birds and the animals all around us.
Parents and grandparents, use this book as an excuse to go out on a walk with your children and grandchildren, and delight in the world exactly as the characters in this book do.
Conversation Starters
Where is a good place for us to take a walk to see living nature?
What animals live around us? (Learn to identify animals and their signs.)
When can we see wild flowers or blooming trees? (Study some.)
How does going out in nature make you feel?
Let's try to make a colorful drawing like in the book.
Let's go out for a walk and try to make some rhymes from what we see.
What are seasons? Do our lives have seasons the way nature does?
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