This book appeals to children who love animals and dinosaurs. However, from a parents’ point of view, it’s a rational and scientific balance to the flood of creationist and magical stories of our origins that children are inundated with from an early age. And an important introduction to our place in our natural environment.

For any parent (or grandparent or librarian or teacher or blogger) who’s worried about the rise in religious extremism, and science denial that’s threatening children’s education, and adults’ understanding of the world (especially in America, but more recently in the UK too) this book is an important first step.

Without preaching, the book presents the whole complex web of life on earth as a series of gradual changes – Worm needs to swim, and that process turns it into a fish, the fish needs to crawl out of the water, and that drives its evolution into a lizard – which then becomes a dinosaur, and then a bird. The book ends with Worm’s evolution into the reader – and asks them what they want to do next – making children wonder what direction their evolution might eventually take the human race.

It’s an inspiring question, promoting a positive view of the future. On the last page, a family tree shows Worm’s progress through the animal world, and the changes life on earth has gone through on its journey.