Customer Reviews

Evolution Book: The Story of 4,000 Million Years of Life on Earth

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Having chipped away at ''The Beak Of The Finch'' and other long and to most people, tiresome science novels, I appluad the way the facts are presented so that it will not make children conveintly store it on a bookshelf until it accumalates a fine layer of dust. Instead, it makes evolution avaible to the layman- or at least someone without a Phd and a long attention span. Clear and amusing. I reccomend.

This book has 375 pages before the index. It is not an easy read. It covers a lot. The scope is, very very wide, entirely too wide for my current needs (preparing curriculum for a 1st grader), so I haven't spent a lot of time going through it in detail yet. My initial reaction is that this isn't for the average 10 year old. I first seriously studied the evolution of man at 9, but it was a more focused study, and I think this would have just annoyed me, giving me information I didn't want yet, and not providing me with enough details about what I did want, perhaps killing my interest in the subject. I won't list off all the chapter information because it would take too long, but as an example I will list the information for the one section. 1000 Million Years Ago: Sexual Seaweeds, Jelly Animals, An Explosion of Shells, Seavegetables, How to a Make Plankton Net, Algae Collection, Pretty and Pretty Useful, Small Worlds, Sponging, Moon Babies, Seashore Guide, The Aliens, A Taste of Worms, Worm Hunt, The Oldest Sea Monster, Shell Shapes, Beachcombing, Shell Hunt, and Mollusk Stew. It certainly has its uses, but I wouldn't expect to just buy it for an average elementary school aged child to devour all on their own.

This was one of my childhood favorites, along with _The Science Book_ by the same author. This is the only nonfiction book that I remember with fondness from elementary school. I read it front to back, although I never tried any of the suggested activities/experiments.

This is a wonderful, thick, funny and eminently understandable book for children on evolution. Nearly 400 pages, but extremely well written. Makes difficult subject matter approachable. Recommend for elementary school students (4th-5th grade).