Against the remote possibility that neither of you has heard that I’ve written a book called The Wonder of Life on Earth, which is out next week, well, you know now. Or, rather, I co-wrote it. I did the text, but an artist called Raxenne Maniquiz painted the pictures. They aren’t attempts as realism so much as stylish and impressionistic. The book is aimed at pre-teens, who I’m sure will appreciate the pictures more than the text. In an afterword, I wrote that Raxenne’s illustrations ‘remind me of a book I read as a small child called The First Days of the Earth. That was a long time ago, and you can’t get it any more’.
Indeed, you can’t. I tried. I could find no trace of its ever having existed.
Then I had an epiphany.
The book was actually called First Days of the World, and I have just taken delivery of a paperback copy I bought on eBay. It was 
published by Scholastic in 1958. The text was by Gerald Ames and Rose Wyler, the impressionistic illustrations by Leonard Weisgard. I am sure the copy I had as a small child back in the mid- 1960s was hardback, but after almost 60 years, my memory isn’t what it was.
But as for the pictures — looking them now, the wonder of them came flooding back in a wave of nostalgia that feels almost like physical vertigo. The power of these pictures took me back to my infant self. I hope that The Wonder of Life on Earth will have such an impression on a young mind that they’ll feel the same when they come across it again more than half a century later.
