Through a series of visual and written cameos depicting key moments in Darwin’s life, Manning and Granström have created a picture book biography of one of the most influential figures in human history.

Starting with his childhood, through his failed studies at Edinburgh and Cambridge universities and onto, for the bulk of the book, his 5 year journey around the world on HMS Beagle, readers dip in and out of (what is presented as) Darwin’s thoughts; each double page spread features a short passage as if taken from Darwin’s personal diaries.

These “diary extracts” are supported by several boxes on each page further fleshing out the given moment in Darwin’s life. These are presented as facts about Darwin and his journey, rather than personal reflections.

Following the return of the Beagle to the UK, What Mr Darwin Saw follows Darwin’s route to publishing The Origin of Species, acknowledging the controversy it stirred up amongst the religious faithful, and also the important role played Alfred Russel Wallace, a contemporary naturalist who independently proposed a theory of evolution due to natural selection.

This great picture book tells a story you’re never to young to know about. On the down side I initially found this quite a difficult book to read aloud to my children. Although the book does tell a linear biography of Darwin, each double page spread stands alone and so readers have to make a lot of connections of their own when following the story from cover to cover. For example, on one page Darwin is studying in Edinburgh, whilst next he is in Cambridge and although one can infer what has taken place, it’s not immediately clear.

The decision to adopt a diary style for the main bodies of text makes the narrative immediately personal, but for adults and children very used to 21st century text, the 19th century echoes in vocabulary choices and syntax can make it a slightly stumbling read, at least the first time. This is definitely a case of where re-reading turns a good book into a great book.

On the plus side, everyone in our family learned a lot from What Mr Darwin Saw. It was fascinating to discover more about the journey of the Beagle than just the visit to the Galapagos islands; readers see Darwin in the Andes and Australia, making observations that impact upon his thinking about evolution.

This books is also brilliant as a springboard. It could be used to do so much with – from literacy projects based on diary writing, geography projects following the journey of the Beagle, through to science activities such as comparing fossil remains with their modern day ancestors.

The illustrations are enjoyable and certainly open out Darwin’s story to a wider audience. Do not be fooled, however, by the pictures – this book is a great example of a picture book ideal for older children, say 10-12, although M at 6 has thoroughly enjoyed it, and J at 3 will happily sit and listen whilst her older sister, inspired by Darwin’s story, asks all sorts of questions I don’t know the answer to!

Having lapped up What Mr Darwin Saw we felt the best way to celebrate Darwin’s contribution to science was to create our own evolutionary tree of life.

The Open University Tree of Life poster

Once we had the basic relationships for animals sorted, we set about creating a 3D tree of life. We gathered a selection of wind-lopped branches from our garden and the nearby park. We chose the largest branch to be the trunk of our tree, and into the trunk of our tree we drilled 15 holes approximately equal distances down the trunk.

After our shed experience inspired by Findus, M was keen to try out the electric drill. Because of the size of our “trunk” we had to do the drilling in the kitchen. Because of the size of our “branches” we used a flat drill bit rather than a regular drill bit.

As you can see J didn’t like the sound of the drill, but M adored it! The raw power in her hands!

Once drilled we put our trunk in a pot of sand and hotglued our “branches” into the drilled holes. Our bare tree was ready!

Next up I printed out images of all the living things we were to include in our tree, this time extending what we had learned already with animals to include fungi, plants and bacteria. The girls coloured in the images and we stuck them to card. The images we used were of a chimpanzee, a lemur, a rabbit, a lion, an elephant, a kangaroo, a duck, a frog, a fish, a starfish, a tarantula, a jellyfish, a mushroom, a sunflower and a type of bacteria.

Then we hung our various life forms from our tree of life in the correct order ie with the life form most distantly related to us on the lowest branch, up to the life form most closely related to us hanging on the branch next to the top of the tree. At the very top of the tree we hung a picture of a person which M had drawn.

Finally, we brought everything together with streamers of DNA – paper party streamers, thrown in pairs to create a approximation to strings of double helixes. As the streamers were thrown the twisting paper looked quite a lot like DNA but by the time the streamers were on the tree, their helix features were for the most part lost! Still, a bit of discussion about DNA went down well with turning our tree of life into a decorated Christmas tree for non-Creationists.

Whilst working out how we are related to lions, ducks and mushrooms we listened to:

We also enjoyed listening to Richard Milner, the singing Darwinian scholar (!) – you can watch a nice video about him on the New York Times website here.


Other activities which might work well alongside reading What Mr Darwin Saw include:

There are loads of online resources for learning about evolution. Here are some I enjoyed whilst teaching myself about the things I’ve forgotten since school, inspired by What Mr Darwin Saw:

Over the next few posts I’ll be reviewing as many as possible of the six books shortlisted for the Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize 2011, an award that celebrates the best recent books that communicate science to young people. The winner will be announced on December 1st.




Disclosure: I received my copy of this book from the publisher. This review, however, reflect my own and honest opinion.

This week’s host for Nonfiction Monday is Anamaria at books together. Do click on through to see what other books are included in this week’s celebration of children’s nonfiction books.

Every year the Clark family spend their holidays at home in the city, but this year they decide to try something new – a house swap. Believing they’ve found the perfect seaside retreat they set off, only to be somewhat surprised to discover their holiday home is a pirate galleon.

The family set about learning the pirate ways necessary to enjoy life on the ocean waves, including how to sleep in a hammock and navigate by the stars. Back in the city the pirates are equally intrigued but willing to give the land lubbers’ life a go, learning about the delights of vacuum cleaners and ovens.

By the end of the holidays both families have had a wonderful time but when they return to their homes things are not quite as they were left, and although the Clark family set about putting things back to rights, they do not completely give up their newly adopted pirate ways.

This story is a dream come true for many children! I’m sure my children are not the only ones who would jump at chance to holiday on a real pirate ship.

The illustrations contain lots of fun details for listeners to point out, including cheeky mice on most pages getting up to all sorts of mischief. However, I did feel that some of the details were included more for adult readers than the intended listening audience (for example, the adverts for other possible house swaps are in tiny print and refer to fairy tale locations). If you like the Shrek movies because they contain in-jokes for the grown-ups you’ll like the similar details in Pirate House Swap.

Pirate House Swap is a fun read in the run up to holidays and has a great theme about learning to adapt to new circumstances and to enjoy different ways of life so I’d definitely recommend picking this book up if you find it at the library. That said, Pirate House Swap does not dislodge our favourite pirate book from its place on the shelves – The Night Pirates by Peter Harris, illustrated by Deborah Allwright.

Having seen the photos of the pirate bedroom, and then fallen in love with the idea of living on a pirate galleon, I was set the challenge of helping the girls transform M’s bed into their own pirate ship.

First task was to design a flag to fly. Using an old pillow case and the very-easy-to-use Berol fabric crayons the girls each set about creating a flag to hoist. In the meantime I created a flagpole out of a broomstick, a pulley and a length of sash window cord.

The pulley was screwed into the top of the broom handle and the length of cord formed a loop over the pulley and down through a hole drilled through the broomstick near the bottom. The flag of choice was attached using safety pins (with some cardboard inserted inside the pillow case to make it fly proudly) and then it was hoisted high!

Next the pirates needed some suitable attire. We made cutlasses following these great instructions from Filth Wizardry guest posting at Alphamom. Eye patches were made from an oval of black cardboard with a loop of elastic attached to the back. Bug magnifiers were used as telescopes!

Finally, I screwed a pulley into a joist in M’s ceiling and used a yoghurt tub and more sash window cord to create a little hoisting system so the pirates could haul their treasure and supplies on to their ship.

The girls loved the opportunity to fight off marauders and terrify any unsuspecting sailors drifting past!

(On a health and safety note, the hoisting rope and flag pole have not been left up to be played with unattended – loose ropes of some considerable length + young children = not a safe combination.)

Whilst playing at pirates we listened to lots of great pirate music including:

Other boat and pirate activities which could work well alongside Pirate House Swap include:

I’m sure there are lots more good ideas in Pirate Things to Make and Do (Usborne Activities) – thanks @Catnipbooks for the suggestion.

For a slightly different take on Pirate House Swap you might like Nayu’s review over at her blog.

Do you have a favourite pirate book, activity or song?

And they have also improved my active vocabulary! Like the names of so many dinosaurs, vexillology is a word I’ve only learned thanks to my daughters…

In creating our much loved cardboard castle M particularly enjoyed making the flags and this led to a discussion about what flags are for, what different countries’ flags look like, where you can see flags and so on. We didn’t have a good resource at home to go to, and so a trip to the library netted The World Encyclopedia of Flags by Alfred Znamierowski, and thus began our current passion for vexillology, or to put it another way, for studying flags.

This encyclopedia is exactly what we were looking for. The first section (“Flags through the ages”) includes historical background, talks about flag “families”, as well as military and navy flags, whilst the second half of the book includes flags from all over the world (both national and regional) and also a section on flags of international organizations and causes. There is enough well-written, informative text to keep older children and adults reading, whilst younger kids will be happy with the many full-colour flags on each page, each one of which has a story to tell.

M enjoyed looking for symbols like lions or eagles in the flags. It was also a great way to introduce her to aspects of geography (“Oh that’s the flag of Switzerland. Where is Switzerland”… so out came the atlas) and history, but what M enjoyed most was all the information useful for designing her own flags ie the various shapes they come in (eg swallow tailed and gonfalon – another one for my expanding vocabulary!) and the typical charges (ie figures such as crosses, stripes or other shapes) found on flags.

Although probably not marketed at 4 and 1 year olds, this was a great book for us right now, definitely a good reference book for the family, and at less than a tenner, quite a bargain.

Having enjoyed the book, M wanted to put her new-found knowledge about flag design to the test so we came up with a fun vexillological project – our own boats dressed with flags as you might see at a regatta.

Photo: Lucy Boynton

We used (per boat):

1. We attached the cardboard tube to the inside of the polystyrene box with duck tape.

2. We designed our flags by colouring in the flag outlines.

3. Colouring completed, we cut out the flags…

4. … and folded them over a length of string (the string must be long enough to go from one end of the polystyrene box to the other via the top of the cardboard tube). We then stapled them into place. Boy, does M love using the stapler!

5. We stretched the flag be-decked string from one end of the polystyrene box, over the top of the cardboard tube and down to the other end of the box, attaching it at both ends with some more duck tape.

6. We decorated the sides of the boats with permanent markers (so that the decorations didn’t wash off in the water).

7. We found some willing passengers and headed off to float our boats downstream.

The World Encyclopedia of Flags: (And yes, you could choose it if you were to win the giveaway)

Whilst making and decorating our boats we’ve been listening to an eclectic lot: Sailing Around The World by The Wiggles, The Suffrage Flag sung by Elizabeth Knight, and an old favourite – Take me in your lifeboat by Flatt and Scruggs.

Other flag and boat activities that look really fun are:

This is my first Nonfiction Monday post – a regular feature in the Kidlitosphere community, celebrating nonfiction books for kids. Picture Book of the Day has more information.

For more reviews of nonfiction books for kids, check out this week’s roundup hosted by Anamaria at her blog, books together.

Last, but certainly not least, please take a look at Kristine’s Squeak Squeak post over at Bilbified. She has written a wonderful post about a book her daughter loves and a really fun sounding book-inspired activity that they got up to. Kristine describes it as a “Zoe style” post – very flattering, but I wonder if she blogs with a woolly hat on her head, a hot water bottle tied on to her underneath her dressing gown, slurping coffee for dear life…. (what a start to the week, heh?!)