School Library Journal
''A shaggy creature crouches in the heat of the African sun. In each hand it clutches a stone. Working quickly, it begins to strike one stone against the other.'' So begins this richly illustrated and well-told story of the development of humans from the ape-man Australopithecus to modern man. Through Stone Age and Ice Age, this slim volume describes our early Earth that some scientists believe was a single land mass on an immense ocean, and shows how early man evolved from simple foragers to hunters and farmers. This oversized book offers meaty sketches of these developments, also citing important theories by noted scientists in the field of anthropology such as Dr. Donald Johanson and Dr. Louis S. B. Leaky. Unfortunately there is no table of contents, but with so few pages it is fairly easy to scan for facts, and there is an index. What this book lacks in depth it makes up admirably with detailed illustrations in a picture-book format and a relaxed narrative suitable for reading aloud. A fine introduction to more detailed accounts like Helen Roney Sattler's Hominids: A Look Back at Our Ancestors (Lothrop, 1988). --Denia Lewis Hester, Dewey School, Evanston, IL