Govert Schilling, Adriaan Bijloo

Exovida

Are we alone in the universe? A boy's road trip through the history of that question

Tom is an astronomy enthusiast who dreams of becoming a comic artist. When his mother Mary, who works for NASA, announces a major discovery at a press conference – a tantalisingly Earth-like exoplanet – she takes him on a road trip across the United States, to places such as Roswell and a range of observatories. Along the way, Tom is engrossed in an old comic by a mysterious creator who calls himself C. Superiu.

As the journey unfolds, fact and fiction intertwine: from antiquity and the Renaissance (Epicurus, Giordano Bruno) via Kepler and Huygens to modern names like Fermi and Frank Drake, all carried by Tom's and his mother's search for the same answer. History of science and adventure story flow into each other, in a wide variety of shifting drawing styles. Complex science is made accessible without being simplified. The book is meant to be read in one go: only when you finally come up for air do you realise how much you've learnt.

Schilling is the Netherlands' best-known astronomy journalist and the author of dozens of books, some of which have been translated into English, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese and Japanese
Bijloo received a Vlag en Wimpel from the Penseel jury, the Dutch award for children's book illustration, for the graphic novel Hoe alles begon (How Everything Began)