Nicola Davies and Jenni Desmond’s first collaboration: a spectacular tour of Planet Earth and a powerful rallying cry.

Where on Earth are you, right now? It’s late where I am and almost everyone’s asleep, but I’m awake, looking out into the night. Wondering… As the clock strikes midnight, a little girl and her sister visit animals of every shape and size, all around the world – discovering that, in some places, creatures have just started their day, where in others they’re already busy hunting for food.

Turning the popular concept of time-zones on its head and combining it with a powerful climate message and delightful illustrations, this book is narrative non-fiction at its most spellbinding.

One World: 24 Hours on Planet Earth is a children’s book all about the environment and climate change. The story follows two small children just before midnight on the 21st of April as they travel the world to different countries and time zones and see what is happening to the animals in that place at that time.

Beginning in Svalbard, Artic Circle at 1 am we meet a mother polar bear and her two cubs who are looking for seals to eat. The message here is about the ice melting. We then move onto Luangwa Valley, California where a baby elephant has just been born and is protected from the lions by her family and poacher by the rangers.

At the beginning of the book, the author explains to the reader how the earth is split into 24 segments, like an orange. Each segment represents an hour and each hour is different in different places. I did expect the book to follow this 24-hour pattern especially as the first two places the children visit are at 1 am and 2 am, however, the book then jumps to 5.30 am and it does this numerous times. This did disappoint a little as I expect it to follow with 3 am, 4 am, etc., just to have some consistency for children. We only get to visit 12 places so that is 12 time zones.

The illustrations are amazing and full page and the information provided is basic but is enough to whet children’s appetite about climate change and there are some basic actions at the back which the author says can help in the fight.

Overall, a good starter book for children about the world, animals, and what is happening to them because of climate change, plastic waste, pollution, poachers, etc.

Nicola Davies is an award-winning author, whose many books for children include The Promise (Green Earth Book Award 2015, Greenaway Shortlist 2015), Tiny (AAAS Subaru Prize 2015), A First Book of Nature, Whale Boy (Blue Peter Award Shortlist 2014), and the Heroes of the Wild Series (Portsmouth Book Prize 2014).

She graduated in zoology, studied whales and bats and then worked for the BBC Natural History Unit. Underlying all Nicola’s writing is the belief that a relationship with nature is essential to every human being, and that now, more than ever, we need to renew that relationship. Nicola’s children’s books from Graffeg include Perfect, The Word Bird, Animal Surprises, Into the Blue and the Shadows and Light series: The White Hare, Mother Cary’s Butter Knife, The Selkie’s Mate, Elias Martin, Bee Boy and the Moonflowers and The Eel Question