Skip to main content

One Beetle Too Many: The Extraordinary Adventures of Charles Darwin

By

ONE BEETLE TOO MANY: THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF CHARLES DARWIN; Kathryn Lasky, illustrated by Matthew Trueman; Somerville, MA: Candlewick, 2009; unpaged.
At first I thought Matthew Trueman's illustrations were a bit juvenile-looking for Lasky's serious subject, but text and pictures end up to be perfectly complementary as we follow the young, endlessly fascinated Darwin through his childhood of beetle collecting (once finding three he wanted to take home, he put one in his mouth to free his hands for the other two), and then on his monumental voyage of discovery on the Beagle. Throughout the expedition, the vessel's captain, Robert Fitzroy, provided the foil for Darwin's discoveries in terms of contemporary religious belief in an unchangeable, inviolate Creation and Lasky expertly presents the one, then the other. She also faces the religious issue square-on: "Even though Darwin believed in change, that did not mean that he did not believe in God or a Creator. He would later write in reply to a question about his religion, 'I do not believe in the Bible as divine revelation and therefore not in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.' But he did believe in a Creator who had 'originally breathed' life in to the earliest forms of living things." Whatever your belief, strictly creationist, strictly evolutionary biology, or the combination of the two many of us hew to, one could hardly go wrong using One Beetle too Many as a starting point for discussions about everything from the scientific method, to the wonders of the natural world, to the connection between theology and science.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stand Tall by Joan Bauer

By DeeDee
Stand Tall By Siena Siegel by Joan Bauer Putnam, 2002, 182 pgs Realistic Fiction Tree is 12 years old and over 6 feet tall. That would be great if he were a basketball player, but he is not. Dealing with his unusual size is not Tree's only challenge. Tree's parents have recently gone through a divorce, and his grandfather has had his leg amputated as the result of an old Vietnam War injury. The strength of this book is the characterizations. All of the main characters are dimensional and sympathetic. Bauer sets the characters in real and often funny family situations. Best of all is the character of Tree. He is boy with a heart to match his stature. This is a great book for boys or girls ages 9-12, as a read aloud or for individual reading. This book could also be a good Rx book for children whose families are going through divorce, or for anyone who feels like they don't fit in.
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker

By
  Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker By Heidi Heilig New York: Greenwillow Books, 2025. Fiction. 291 pages. Thanks to Cincinnati Lee's no good, dirty rotten, artifact stealing great great great grandfather, Cincinnati's family is now cursed and Cincinnati feels like it's up to her to break the curse. Which involves trying to steal the artifacts back from museums that her grandfather robbed from graves and archeological sites around the world and return them to their countries of origin. But when Cincinnati's first artifact stealing mission goes awry, she decides it might be more effective to steal an all-powerful artifact herself that she can use to break the curse - The Spear of Destiny. Unfortunately her race for the spear will pit her against art smugglers and thieves intent on finding the ancient artifact themselves. If you are looking for an Indiana Jones read-alike, this is the perfect for you! Heavy on the adventure with similar levels of mysticism to those seen in th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more