By troubling notions of time-as-progress and human exceptionality, this paper considers what shifts in conceptualisations of children's literacies and futures might be possible in the context of faltering of capitalist logics of progress. The paper draws on a 3 year ethnographic study with families and young children in northern England, which asked what might be learnt about young children's literacies by starting with the everyday in communities. Arguing for the interconnection between notions of human exceptionalism, human/planetary relations and literacies and language, the paper offers some alternative directions for sorely needed imaginaries about the role of literacies in how young children relate to their worlds.