HOW DID HUMANS GO EXTINCT?

There are different theories.

On a trip to the natural history museum in the year 10,002,021 C.E., young Plib enjoys the exhibit showing how he and his fellow Nøørfbløøks evolved from frogs—but what really floats his lily pad is the exhibit on humans, his favorite kind of extinct creature. That night at bedtime he asks his mom what happened 10 million years ago, and she explains that they either mucked up the planet’s climate, exterminated themselves because they “liked to hate each other,” greedily split into haves and have-nots and stopped taking care of one another…or maybe learned at last to live in harmony until an asteroid hit the Earth and wiped them out. In any case, only scattered evidence of what they were like remains, and Hoppe illustrates this cogent recitation with (pre)historical scenes of trollish, speculatively reconstructed figures sporting fur, feathers, or fins along with hilariously mismatched bits of clothing from various eras, goofy teeth, and skin tones running to blues and purples. Plib likes the harmony-followed-by-asteroid scenario enough to go to sleep with a smile on his bulbous green face. Today’s readers may feel likewise, though even younger ones will leap to the understanding that if we want to make it happen we’d better hop to it.

A tongue-in-cheek invitation to make some choices about how we’d like to croak.