Neal Layton, The Big Story of Being Alive, Wren & Rook, February 2023, 32 pp., RRP $26.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781526362650
Neal Layton is a prolific British illustrator who has illustrated books by well-known authors such as Michael Rosen and Cressida Cowell in addition to illustrating his own texts. The big story of being alive is a non-fiction picture book he has written following on from several earlier titles such as The story of stars and A World Full of Wildlife (and how you can protect it).
In this humorous but informative book, Layton tries to explain what it means to be alive. Funny comments make the comparison between alive and dead. A drawing of a robot is accompanied by small text saying, ‘he is definitely not alive’ and a fly is shown as ‘a flying fly’ and a ‘not flying fly’. The text then goes on to explain about cells, growth and reproduction being the characteristics of things which are alive.
This very complex concept is explained simply but not simplistically. Human conception and embryonic growth are shown as examples of complex organisms while bacteria and yeast are drawn as single-cell entities. The illustrations are colourful and humorous with the text being arranged in straight lines, curves, boxes, and speech bubbles.
This is a good introduction to the topic of life but there is one erroneous illustration. There is a page which shows two wooden crates labelled ‘Living Things (made of cells)’ and ‘Not Living Things (not made of cells)’. Unfortunately, this second box contains a wooden broom handle, a violin, and a cake. They are definitely not living things, but they are still made up of cells, albeit dead ones. If the crates had just been labelled ‘Living Things’ and ‘Not Living Things’ there would not have been a problem.
Reviewed by Lynne Babbage
