September 2020
My Life at the Bottom
by Linda Bondestam
An enchanting story about the ongoing climate change told by the voice of an axolotl, how the environment is affected and changed. Each year, several species go extinct, disappearing from the surface of the earth forever. A perfect being, the result of millions of years of evolution, no longer exists. An axolotl is a small smiling amphibian that lives its entire life at the larval stage, which means that it never really grows up. Nowadays, it is believed to exist in the wild only, in a lake in Mexico – but not even that is certain. In this picture book of an astonishing axolotl, we possibly meet the last of its kind. He thrives in his own pool where he hangs out with tiger salamanders, collects treasures, and spies on what the peculiar two-legged beings on the beach come up with. But as it gets hotter and hotter, the pool gets cloudy, and everyone moves on. The poor axolotl is left all alone. Everything changes one day when a giant wave sweeps away everything, and the axolotl embarks on a journey to the unknown. Linda Bonsestam’s happy, ecological, and existential book about life on earth – the fragile, but at the same time robust. A surprising and moving story about climate change and just how dull it is to play alone. A touching story combined with beautifully detailed illustrations of the wonders of the underworld.
