Here: The Dot We Call Home

Here: The Dot We Call Home is a simple and enchanting book that invites children to see themselves as both descendants and ancestors, and caretakers of our beautiful planet. 

This is my home. I live here. But I am not the first… 

When a child finds clues that others have lived in her house before her, she begins to wonder about them, and about those who will come after her. The more she wonders, the more her sense of home expands, stretching to include an entire planet. 

With her thoughtful approach and her unique ability to make big concepts engaging and personal to children, Laura Alary invites readers along for the ride, zooming through time and space to the outer reaches of our solar system for a new perspective on the planet we share. The child marvels: How can something so big seem so small? But also: How can something so small seem so big? Overwhelmed by the mess that humans have left behind, in the end she realizes that there is only one thing to do: start where she is. 

In spare and simple words, Here: The Dot We Call Home helps children begin to think of themselves as both descendants and ancestors, and to comprehend that people of every place and time share one home, and the task of looking after it. 

Here: The Dot We Call Home is:  

• An engaging story about one curious and thoughtful child 

• An imaginative way to enlarge a child’s perspective on our homes and neighborhoods, and how we’re all connected 

• A great conversation-starter about the environment and our responsibility to protect it 

• Filled with enchanting and whimsical illustrations that encourage a child’s natural sense of wonder 

• Ideal for boys and girls ages 5-10 years old 

Add it to the shelf with books like If You Come to Earth by Sophie Blackall and Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth by Oliver Jeffers. 

Laura Alary is a storyteller, educator, and writer who delights in writing stories that make us bigger on the inside. Among her many books are Make Room: A Child's Guide to Lent and Easter, Look! A Child's Guide to Advent and Christmas, Breathe: A Child's Guide to Ascension, Pentecost, and the Growing Time and Rise: A Child’s Guide to Eastertide​. A trained theologian and biblical scholar with degrees in Classics (B.A., Dalhousie), Theology (M.Div., Knox College, University of Toronto) and New Testament (Ph.D., University of St. Michael’s College), Laura currently works in a theological library. She lives with her three children in Toronto, where she likes to go for walks in the woods, tend her tiny pollinator garden, and keep her eyes open for signs of new life.

​Cathrin Peterslund is an illustrator, visual artist, and cartoonist. She studied at The Animation Workshop (Denmark), and graduated with a BA in Graphic Storytelling in 2017. She now works as a freelance illustrator in Copenhagen.