Publishers are leaning into poetry pretty heavily this publishing season. Always Beginning: The Big Bang, the Universe, and You by Candace Savage and Rachel Wada is a book short on text but huge on ideas.

Through lilting, non rhyming, poetic text, readers discover the secrets of the universe starting at the Big Bang and ending in the present.

Candace Savage has taken a HUGE topic and carefully crafted a simple narrative to allow readers to wonder about the origins of the universe. Reading through the story, I found the story to be quite compelling but also realised that if I was reading this to a group of young readers, I was going to need to be prepared for the “But whys?” Thankfully, to my rescue comes a brilliant timeline at the end of the book to explain some of the concepts related throughout the story. I also found that this book would be an incredible companion for adults who may be planning a trip to a natural history museum. I live in Toronto and the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) has an amazing new Dawn of Life exhibit. I would love to see teachers reading this story with their students before heading over to the museum to delve deeper into the topics in the story.

Rachel Wada’s illustrations contain multitudes. Readers will feel as if they are travelling through time and space with the simple colour palette and pictures that move at hyper speed throughout the story.