ONE DAY A DOT

For preschoolers, an introduction to ideas referencing the Big Bang, evolution, and more.

The simple text is laid out over digital drawings that are filled in with blocks of muted color; they depict sweet-faced critters and racially diverse humans against backdrops that take readers from the beginning to modern times. The first text page shows a round, black dot with faint swirls of blue surrounding it: “One day a dot appeared.” The dot bursts because “it was so excited to be there.” More dots arrive and coalesce with the first, light enters the scene, and the blue planet appears, third from the sun. Dots become shapes that play games; these games change from “Catch the Light” to “Eat or Be Eaten”; fish move to land; dinosaurs appear; a comet wipes out the dinosaurs; a small, furry creature survives and generates an evolving line of mammals; primates that look like chimpanzees become people; people keep getting smarter as they teach and learn; a modern family shows up on the scene cradling “you” (depicted as a mixed-race child with a brown-skinned dad and pale-skinned mom). Whew! The use of the word “dot” for several different objects—primordial matter, planets, a comet, etc.—cleverly provides continuity, as does the recurring refrain in which each creature does “whatever it needed to stay alive.” However, the oversimplification of ideas creates an underlying implication that animals are the only living things and that humans are superior beings; there is no hint of ecological interdependence.

Sugarcoated nursery didactics.