You Are Never Alone

Author Elin Kelsey confesses her passion for having children understand the wonders of life on Earth and the importance of care for its resources. This is demonstrated by the fact that, along with other ecology-related projects, she is the cofounder of #OceanOptimism, a Twitter campaign to “crowdsource and share ocean conservation successes”.

From the opening line of You Are Never Alone, “Every moment this beautiful planet showers you with gifts”, readers are drawn into that passion. There is poetry in every line:

You gobble fruits from plants pollinated by bats
in the twilight and bees in the day.

The entire work is a paean to the relationships among terrestrial forces, not cataloguing facts so much as explaining how one human being is part of a whole:

Bears drag spawned salmon on shore, spreading fishy nutrients that
help massive trees grow. Forests maintain the Earth’s climate.
More whales means more plants and fish and bears
and a healthier you.

There is a feeling of optimism here, exhibited no more strongly than in the closing lines:

You sense these wild connections. Sunshine fills you
with hope. Your imagination smiles when you climb a tree.
You are never alone. Feel gravity hug you tight as you
twirl around the sun.

Accompanying the lyrical text are warm spreads of ink-and watercolour illustration. Korean-born Soyeon Kim, who now lives in Toronto, Ontario, has filled the pages with a whirl of images of natural and man-made objects. Even the urban landscape shown at one point is full of plant and animal life. Throughout, frolicking children take their place exploring under the ocean, climbing trees to sit on birds ten times their size, and observing mighty mites that are bigger than they are. The surprise of this off-kilter scale makes the reader want to examine all the elements of the pictures and then reread the words.

Jacket copy indicates that this same team has published two other titles, You Are Stardust and Wild Ideas, about “how animals solve problems”.

You Are Never Alone would make a good addition to a primary unit on ecology or an Earth Day story time.