BEFORE I LIVED HERE: A Journey Through Time

 Earth has an incredibly long history prior to any form of life emerging. Then, as anyone who ever scanned a planetary timeline knows, life on Earth preceded human arrival and spans the majority of a timeline of evolution, with humans having a comparative sliver as a  "last minute" arrival in comparison to all other life forms. That's an intriguing and somewhat academic view of our planet's history. If nothing else, it's a view that can leave us (me) feeling inconsequential and relatively "speck-like" in the big picture of the world.

The numbers and spans of time and magnitude of planetary change are overwhelming. That's why this picture book take on Earth's evolutionary stages feels both kid friendly and academically valuable. The "story" is anchored in a seemingly specific place, through the eyes and voice of a child, and with sufficient familiarity to other concepts to make the planetary  journey through time digestible. 

In BEFORE I LIVED HERE,  written by Stacy S. Jensen and illustrated by Victo Ngai, perspective shifts from past-to-present. Instead, a young first-person narrator shares their perspective through a second story window. With vibrant illustrations, readers come along to view a landscape of mountains, and the neighborhood of homes/community in the foreground, just outside the narrator's window. 

That perspective shift is captured in a single line:

"But my house was not always there."

NEAL PORTER BOOKS, Holiday House
2025

Successive pages, text and images offer views of the construction of that neighborhood, a surreal view of the planning and developing that preceded construction of modern times. Throughout all of these, the horizon of a mountain range. Each page turn moves the perspective back in time by centuries and more, revealing pioneers and the displaced original residents whose land had been stolen. Another turn depicts those Native folks living full community lives. Another turn takes us to (you guessed it) earlier dinosaur residents of that very territory. Throughout these page turns, the horizon of mountain range persists, even as the land is submerged in underwater in prior epochs.

 Only then, about a billion years BEFORE I LIVED HERE, that mountain range burst from the earth's crust, shaping the land around it. Other than on the prehistoric spreads, a squirrel graces some corner of the spreads, tying the place and continuity to the PLACE where this particular story is being unearthed from its past. 

The closing is equally succinct and effective, 

"Now, I see those mountains 

from my house."

In that penultimate spread, the barefoot narrator in modern clothing looks outward through a free-standing doorway along with a suspended window. Both of those openings to the land frame the current landscape of people and community. The expanse surrounding these frames are an accumulation line images in scratched into a black background base, rendered as rainbow-colored reminders of the prior pages. That superimposed contemporary view on foregrounded historic references offers a remarkable sense of the change and permanence in which we live on this planet. One final spread becomes a searchable expanse of the passages of time that have been described. 

Back matter extends the dramatically portrayed Earth-history with accessible details and brief descriptors  for each spread. This is a magical interpretation of very well-researched and documented nonfiction content. I genuinely believe that this highly scientific depiction of complex  information could be enjoyed by very young audiences, because the illustrations and language are told in reverse time, anchoring ideas in the local and familiar aspects of a neighborhood. It also offers older audiences an identifiable timeline and pattern of regression that invites anyone, anywhere, to look around and wonder, question, read, and research.

Concepts of permanence and change are challenging at early developmental levels, but this is a terrific way to share those concepts and other abstract relationships and expanses of time that will intrigue readers of many ages.