What Mr Darwin Saw

This timely book helps children think deeply about one of the most interesting and important of questions: how did all the species, including ourselves, begin and evolve? At the heart of the story is Darwin’s remarkable five-year information seeking journey across the world on HMS Beagle, a journey which takes him to a Brazilian rainforest, the Andes, the Galapagos islands and Australia. We learn about these terrains and about the creatures he and the crew gathered for study. It is the variety of ways of sharing all this that is likely to appeal to the young reader. As well as the main narrative in journal format there are inset boxes with extra facts, annotated diagrams and speech bubbles revealing thoughts and attitudes. The book is a visual feast too, full of life and colour: double spread illustrations create dramatic scenes – Darwin confronted by giant lizards on the Galapagos islands and the impassioned Oxford Evolution debate – and tiny vignettes show the specimens.

What made Darwin such a successful scientist after rather an underachieving childhood and early adulthood? The book rightly gives children some insight into this. After several false starts he began to exploit his passion about living creatures and their characteristics and became extremely focused and dedicated to his research. What the book reveals is that the voyage gave him the time and space to think about what his findings implied. So we see him on horseback, on the Argentine Pampas, reflecting that ‘The armadillos resemble the fossils I found! Although much smaller.’ So although painstaking enquiry and investigation is crucial, sometimes thinking hard about what you have found brings understanding.

Children also need to know that other scientists were thinking along the same lines as Darwin. He clinched his achievement just in time by publishing his book, On the Origin of Species.

Brilliant throughout at explaining difficult concepts in a way that children can connect with, this book has a simply splendid closing explanation of the theory of evolution, working through natural selection. In short, this is a book to inspire young scientists to experiment, collect and, above all, to reflect.