Martha Maps It Out In Time

Martha has gone to the beach for a day out with Mum and Dad. While she’s exploring, she finds a fossil – an ammonite – which dates all the way from the Triassic period, 200 million years ago!

Going back even further, Martha thinks about all the other creatures that might have roamed the beach before Mary the ammonite – the Helicoprion, an old relative of our modern-day shark that had a spiral-shaped jaw, from the Paleozoic Era, and maybe, around 380 million years ago, the Dunkleosteus, a large fish with body armour that could grow up to nine metres long!

And before then – over 3 billion years ago – the spot where Martha was standing was very different once again. At that time, there were no big or small creatures at all, but lots of bacteria. Before that, Earth was just lava, rock and space dust! On thinking it through, Martha feels very grateful to be a part of Earth’s journey, and maps out what she thinks the future on Earth might look like, too.

Filled with tons of doodles and interesting notes, Martha Maps It Out In Time takes the reader through the history of the Earth, complete with a cool ‘road map’ of the different evolutionary eras on Earth at the end in a double-page spread. Martha loves to create maps, and this is what she’s doing here, as a sequel to the first book in the series, Martha Maps It Out.

There is a huge amount of information here, presented in a purposefully chaotic, notebook-y, Where’s Wally type of search-and-find format that some children might find visually confusing, but some will find immersive and fascinating. It’s a lovely picture book, definitely aimed at slightly older children.