Small World

Written by Ishta Mercurio

Illustrated by Jen Corace

Abrams Books for Young Readers

978-1-4197-3407-6

32 pp.

Ages 4-8

July 2019

The world may seem like a big place, formidable at times, often too big to embrace, and sometimes unwelcoming but Ishta Mercurio's Small World shows young readers that the world you make from the people you let in and the places you go is the perfect size to fit your dreams in.

From Small World, illus. by Jen Corace, written by Ishta Mercurio

As a baby, Nanda's world was her mother's arms.

safe,
warm,
small.

From Small World, illus. by Jen Corace, written by Ishta Mercurio

As she grew, her circle grew wider to include her extended family who nurture her with food and play, until she can cultivate her own curiosity with school, playmates and dreams of space travel and engineering.

From Small World, illus. by Jen Corace, written by Ishta Mercurio

Leaving home for college, Nanda moves from locales of "sun-kissed maze of wheat" through "pinecone-prickled mountains and the microscopic elegance of fractals in the snow" to the big city where she helps develop a "human-powered helicopter lifting toward the sky" before becoming a pilot and finally an astronaut.

From Small World, illus. by Jen Corace, written by Ishta Mercurio

Though she's looking at the depth and breadth of the universe with its stars and planets and our world as just a small part of it all, Nanda can still see Earth as safe, warm and small, as "a circle called home." 

Small World reminds us that life is a circle, carrying a child from the safety and smallness and warmth of our very first world in a mother's arms to a myriad of other worlds that overlap and permutate with time, place and content. There's a rhythm here that Ishta Mercurio embeds in her words, carrying Nanda from birth to extraordinary achievement, lifting her from needs for survival to dreams and realization. Moreover, Ishta Mercurio has made it all the more relevant with Nanda's diverse background and her aspirations in science and tech.

That circle of life and of worlds as round as that of our earth is perpetuated by Jen Corace's illustrations. From dinner plates and bubbles, trees and stars, Jen Corace's artwork, created with gouache, ink and pencil, is a study in shapes and angles and geometric form. The illustrations are saturated with patterns of lines and in fabrics, wallpaper, landscapes and structures like roller-coasters, creating a rich background for a girl who aspires and inspires.

A study in perspective and dreaming big, Small World takes Nanda, and readers along with her, on a journey where anything is possible when you create a world that right for you.