Unless you’ve been hiding out in a cave for the last 20 years, you’ve heard that the universe is expanding and it started with a big bang. To put an expanding universe in perspective, it helps to imagine that you live in a two-dimensional universe. There’s a great book for helping you imagine this; it’s called Flatland and was written in 1884 by Edwin A. Abbott. It’s an amazing book of mathematical and scientific fiction and it’s short, so by all means pick up a copy. Given that we can't include a copy of the book in this issue of Science and Children, the author will settle for explaining the major features of living in a two-dimensional (2—D) universe.