SAND SWIMMERS

The remote and forbidding central Australian desert called the “Dead Heart” appears lifeless, but it harbors curious creatures whose tracks appear in the early morning and evidence of an ancient, wetter world.

After introducing fossil evidence and the broad knowledge of the original desert dwellers, the author/illustrator organizes her description of this secret world by following the path of an early expedition. In 1844, Charles Sturt hoped to find an inland sea; instead, he saw only a hostile wasteland. Linocut rubbings, inset maps and lines from Sturt's journal run along the bottom of each spread; linocut prints in black and brick red show what he missed. Some illustrations are cutaways, showing animals underground, with boxed, smaller images for identification; others are day or nighttime scenes, some with a key that helps readers see the camouflaged animals. In roughly alternating paragraphs, Oliver contrasts the experience of the 1844 expedition with what can be discovered by a determined naturalist. From mulga scrub and spinifex grasses to lizards, insects and rodentlike marsupials, the plants and animals are surprising. The author also provides Aboriginal names (in three languages) for some creatures, and near the end, a spread shows a silent expedition watcher, a successful hunter who could read the mysterious tracks that the Europeans could not.

A remarkably effective combination of history and natural history of a mysterious ecosystem.