Forty years ago, a young Australian illustrator finished a lavishly ornate alphabet book and released it into a world that had no particular reason to notice. Through a combination of artistic ambition, fortunate accident, and an unwavering belief in the intelligence of children, Graeme Base's Animalia grew from a five-thousand-copy print run into a five-million-copy global phenomenon — a quiet argument, sustained across four decades, that young readers rise to meet the bar set for them.