LITTLE OM

LITTLE OM is very curious. He asks about everything and one day, he wonders: "Who am I ?" The question takes him out on a perilous adventure. He travels in a time machine he built himself and follow the String of Life to the beginning. LITTLE OM travels through cold darkness, star-spirals and galaxies to meet the first cells, he then swims with fishes, meet dinosaurs, and witness their downfall. Ice Age comes and goes and warmth makes the soil rich in life again. On a few pages, we follow the evolution of life from the cosmos and the stars to LITTLE OM himself, described with a few rhyming, somewhat absurd verses. LITTLE OM learns that everything is a connected, both in terms of our biological history and all things alive today. The book ends with LITTLE OM’s dream that all living things fit together like puzzle-pieces. We are all important in our own way and have a part to play in the big picture, life has no real end only shifts its external form. Lena Magnusson's illustrations are imaginative and a little crazy collages with simple drawings, which completely fits the text funny content. LITTLE OM is a book that successfully invites many questions about the mysteries of life and death and is well suited to read together, adults and children.Review by Kerstin Hagstrand-Velicu, Swedish Library Association .