This glorious collection of poems from the extremes of existence transports its readers from the frozen wastes to the earth’s fiery core with a flick of the pen. Gross, a multiple prize winning poet for adults as well as for children, enlists the imagination to up-end all notions of normal - normal size, normal time-scales and life-spans. Science, humour and wonder coexist in his accounts of the tardigrade, eight legged creatures less than half a millimetre long whose 500 million years of survival on earth enable them to take, shall we say, a long view of existence. “To enter here, you have to shrink/ and slow down, down. / A day is one tick of the clock, one blink // of the sun’s eye.’ The illustrations, by Jesse Hodgson, are perfect complements to the poems, whose heroes include the Extreme Aunt, (“poised // on the diving board, the top, // with the wind in her hair. // She had to go further, further and it seems, // too far.”) Anyone from 6 to 100 who knows there’s more to life than meets the eye - or ear - will enjoy this book immoderately.