Here's some other cool stuff about our origins:

The Big History Project 
Hosted by David Christian, Funded by The Gates Foundation

The Big History Project is a free online curriculum about the history of everything, or "Big History." It was designed for and tested primarily by ninth graders and it is being  used in classrooms around the world. It's available for free online to anyone that wants to take the course, or teach it at their school. It's full of videos, lesson plans, activities and interactive tools for exploring our the cosmic story, and they've licensed The Universe Verse and will be making it available as part of the supplementary materials they recommend. 

ChronoZoom is the ultimate timeline. It is an online timeline tool that allows you to zoom in and out to put historical events in perspective, from the Big Bang to human history. You can assemble your own timeline about specific events that you want to highlight and share those curated timelines with others. Created just a few miles away from my house at UC Berkeley.

Powers of Ten
Charles & Ray Eames

Powers of Ten takes us on an adventure in magnitudes. Starting at a picnic by the lakeside in Chicago, this famous film transports us to the outer edges of the universe. Every ten seconds we view the starting point from ten times farther out until our own galaxy is visible only a s a speck of light among many others. Returning to Earth with breathtaking speed, we move inward- into the hand of the sleeping picnicker- with ten times more magnification every ten seconds. Our journey ends inside a proton of a carbon atom within a DNA molecule in a white blood cell.

The Holy Universe
David Christopher

This wonderful book by my friend David presents the origin of the universe in the form of an awakening for a depressed modern soul. This Seeker find a Sage who explains the scientific truths behind our history and existence and how they can help us to be our best self today, in a language, like scripture, that aspires to holiness.

Born with a Bang - The Universe Tells Our Cosmic Story
Jennifer Morgan, Dana Lynne Anderson (Illustrator); 2002; Dawn Publications

This beautiful trilogy of books covers  a lot of common material with my books, but they're quite different stylistically.  Jennifer Morgan's books feature full-cover oil painting illustrations and the text takes the form of a loving letter from the perspective of the Universe.  I think they are wonderful books, and I think they do a stunning job of making this story approachable to a very young audience.  Additionally, there is plenty of factual information included in several appendices at the back of the book.

Cartoon History of the Universe 1 - Volume 1-7 From the BIG BANG to Alexander the Great
Larry Gondick; 1997; Main Street Book

I love Larry Gondick’s illustration style and sense of humor. If he had already written books that covered the same material as I hoped to, I may have given up my project.  Fortunately, his three books focus largely on human history, with the entire scope of my 1st book covered in just three pages. 

A Short History of Nearly Everything
& A Really Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson

This marvelous book, and the abridged, kid-friendly version explain not only the history of everything, but also the history of how that history was learned. It tells the story of many of the scientists who discovered the truths about our existence and our place in the universe.

The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins

I don't know if there's any other book, except maybe The Lorax, that has had such a large impact on my personality and career. This book got me very excited about science and evolution in particular. It provides a gene's eye view of evolution and then expands the idea of what evolution can be applied to.

Some other good books worth checking out: