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Our Time on Earth

From the Mayfly to the Immortal Jellyfish

Lily Murray author Jesse Hodgson illustrator

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Templar Publishing

Published:9th Jun '22

Should be back in stock very soon

Our Time on Earth cover

This book about animal life cycles is a celebration of creatures big and small.

WINNER of the Association for Science Education Award 2022

From the delicate mayfly, which lives for just a few precious hours, to the death-defying immortal jellyfish, this book about animal life cycles is a celebration of creatures big and small.

Beautifully written by bestselling children's author Lily Murray, this book explores lifespans across the animal kingdom.

WINNER of the Association for Science Education Award 2022!

We are all on Earth but for a fleeting moment, yet no two lives are the same. From the delicate mayfly, which lives for just a few precious hours, to the death-defying immortal jellyfish, this book about animal life cycles is a celebration of creatures big and small.

Beautifully written by bestselling children's author Lily Murray, this book explores lifespans across the animal kingdom. Beginning with the very shortest, and ending with the longest, learn about the lives of the incredible monarch butterfly, the mysterious axolotl, the grand Galápagos tortoise and many more in this uplifting and eye-opening book. It has never been more important to appreciate and understand the diversity of life.

Stunning illustrations by highly-commended artist Jesse Hodgson perfectly capture each animal in their natural habitat, making this the ideal gift book as well as educational.

A detailed examination of the elastic life spans of animals on Earth.
The amount of time that animals have on our planet is interesting but not as interesting as what they do with that time. That's the key takeaway from an exhaustive, but never exhausting, book about how some animals have but a blink of a life span on Earth (one species of adult mayflies only lives five minutes) while others seem to live forever (the immortal jellyfish appears to regenerate to its birth state in a never-ending cycle). To "discover what these amazing animals make of their time on earth," Murray looks beyond animals' lives and deaths to explain how they maximize that time to keep their species going. Some animals, of course, are more fascinating than others, such as the monarch butterfly, whose life span is between two weeks and eight months but in that time makes a continental journey of up to 2,800 miles, exquisitely illustrated and lucidly explained over four pages. While it's curious that humans are not on the list of 27 species covered, there's still an abundance of mind-blowing facts, particularly about the longevity of, say, the Greenland shark (400-year life span) or the glass sponge (11,000 years!).
Well-researched text and winning visuals anchor a fascinating look at life spans.

-- Kirkus Reviews * Kirkus Revie

ISBN: 9781787417083

Dimensions: 307mm x 242mm x 14mm

Weight: 650g

64 pages