One World: 24 Hours on Planet Earth

by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Jenni Desmond

Interest age: 6 to 8
Reading age: 6 to 8

Published by Walker Books, 2022

  • Non-fiction
  • Picture books

About this book

Planet Earth is always turning, and one whole turn takes 24 hours. Davies and Desmond begin this book by showing readers a globe, split into 24 segments that each represent one hour’s worth of the earth’s turn in a day.

Starting at midnight in London, Davies and Desmond show children what’s happening in the rest of the world at the same moment. For instance, when it’s midnight in Greenwich, it’s also 2am in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia, where elephants shelter under a tree, and 6.30am in Gaoligongshan National Nature Reserve in China, where gibbons begin their morning song.

Two children follow one moment across the world, observing wonderful animals and amazing landscapes and environments, but there’s a dark side too: pollution, rising temperatures, plastic in the oceans, poachers.

Finally, in a spread filled with significance, the children tell the other people sleeping to wake up: tomorrow is already here. In the background in this spread, we see city dwellers who have hung signs outside their windows to promote green energy and other pro-green messages.

This is a fascinating and profound book about climate change for young readers which both celebrates all the wonders of our home planet, and acts as a call to action to help save it.

About the author

Nicola Davies is the author of more than 50 books for children: fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in more than 10 different languages and has won major awards in the UK, US, France, Italy and Germany.

Nicola trained as a zoologist, taking a degree in Natural Sciences from King's College, Cambridge. She spent some years as a field biologist and studied humpback and sperm whales, and bats, before joining the BBC Natural History Unit as a researcher and then presenter.

Following the start of her writing career, Nicola became a senior lecturer in creative writing, at Bath Spa University but has been writing full time for over a decade. She now regularly runs workshops for children and adults to help them find their voices as writers and advocates for nature. In 2017, she was the first recipient of the SLA’s award for Outstanding Contribution to Children’s Non-fiction and in 2018 had four picture books longlisted for the Greenaway Award.

Find out what Nicola Davies is up to as our Writer in Residence

More books like this

Lists of recommended reads

Share this page Twitter Facebook LinkedIn