"Readers can begin to understand the joyous, wondrous, frightening complexity of the creation of life. A book to be read over and over for its intriguing story, illustrations, and captions." -School Library Journal (starred review)

Clear and inviting nonfiction prose, vetted by scientists-together with lively illustrations and a time line-narrate how life on the Earth emerged "out of the blue." It began in the vast, empty sea when the Earth was young. Single-celled microbes too small to see held the promise of all life-forms to come. Those microbes survived billions of years in restless seas until they began to change, to convert sunlight into energy, to produce oxygen until one day-Gulp!-one cell swallowed another and the race was on. Learn how and why creatures began to emerge from the deep-from the Cambrian Explosion to crustaceans, mollusks to fishes, giant reptiles to the rise of mammals-and how they compare to the animals we know today, in a lively and accessible outing into the prehistoric past that boils a complex subject down to its lyrical essence.