Evolution

BOOK REVIEWS HOLIDAY FEATURE EDITION: SCIENCE BOOKS FOR CHILDREN OF ALL AGES AMANDA L. GLAZE, DEPARTMENT EDITOR Grandmother Fish (2nd edition). By Jonathan Tweet. Illustrated by Karen Lewis. 2016. Feiwel and Friends. (ISBN 9781250113238). 40 pp. Hardcover. $17.99. I Used to be a Fish. By Tom Sullivan. 2016. Balzer + Bray. (ISBN 9780062451989). 48 pp. Hardcover. $17.99. From a young age, we are taught not to judge a book by its cover. It is a lesson to bear in mind any branch of this tree, and that spot represents a breeding population of living things. All the organisms further along that branch are the descendants of that population, including all the branches that branch off it” (p. 30). Yes, indeed! I don’t think that the folks behind Understanding Evolution could have explained tree-thinking any better. In further pages of post-story material, Tweet offers hints on explaining the concepts of evolution to children, gives additional information about each of the grandmothers, their traits, and their grandchildren, and provides corrections for common misconceptions about evolution, such as “humans appeared when an ape gave birth to a human” and “evolution progresses into the human form.” These pages, addressed to “parents, teachers, babysitters, and other readers,” are invaluable. How much easier would your job as a biology teacher be if your students came in understanding that evolution does not proceed in a straight line toward humans, but rather “animals evolve into all sorts of new animals, and we just happen to be one of them”? Alas, all of the careful work of Grandmother Fish to resist common misconceptions and provide a scientifically accurate account of evolution could be undone by one reading of I Used to be a Fish. The stated goals of this book are very different from those of Grandmother Fish. Far from “a child’s first book of evolution,” I Used to be a Fish claims it provides “a light introduction to science and a tribute to every child’s power to transform their lives and dream big.” In other words, I Used to be a Fish is trying to have its cake and eat it too—it wants to be seen as a book about science, but it doesn’t want to have to be scientific—and that makes it problematic from an education standpoint. Here are the first few lines of I Used to be a Fish: “I used to be a fish. But I got tired of swimming. So I grew some legs” (pp. 6–8). Any educator who has ever tried to reverse entrenched teleological thinking is already groaning, and sadly, it doesn’t get any better from there. After developing legs and going up on land, the narrator sprouts fur, eventually The American Biology Teacher, Vol. 79, No 9, pages. 778–781, ISSN 0002-7685, electronic ISSN 1938-4211. © 2017 National Association of Biology Teachers. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2017.79.9.778. 778 THE AMERICAN BIOLOGY TEACHER VOLUME. 79, NO. 9, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/abt/article-pdf/79/9/778/60230/abt_2017_79_9_778.pdf by guest on 09 June 2020 EVOLUTION when comparing Grandmother Fish and I Used to be a Fish, which both have blue covers featuring orange fish. Moreover, both are books for preschool-age children, are published by imprints of major publishing companies, and written by men with an interest—but no formal training—in science. That, however, is where the major similarities end. In Grandmother Fish, author Jonathan Tweet and illustrator Karen Lewis have crafted a book that will delight not only children but also educators and scientists alike. I Used to be a Fish, however, will leave evolution educators fuming even if—or possibly especially if—it gets rave reviews among younger readers. Grandmother Fish and I Used to be a Fish have different ambitions, so perhaps it isn’t surprising that they ended up as different as they are in substance. The subtitle of Grandmother Fish is “a child’s first book of evolution,” and there is no mistaking its intent to accurately portray evolution. The story begins with Grandmother Fish, who lived “a long, long, long, long, long time ago,” and proceeds along one path of the history of life, stopping at major branching points to introduce various “grandchildren.” Grandmother Fish, for example, begat Grandmother Reptile, but also Cousin Ray-Finned Fish, Cousin Shark, and Cousin Lobe-Finned Fish. Each of these grandchildren inherited Grandmother Fish’s abilities of wiggling and chomping (kids are, of course, encouraged to wiggle and chomp along with Grandmother Fish). Grandmother Reptile, in addition to wiggling and chomping, could crawl, and she passed each of these traits to her varied grandchildren, including Grandmother Mammal. And so it goes, until we reach Grandmother Human, who could wiggle, chomp, crawl, breathe air, squeak, cuddle, grab, hoot, walk, and talk. Let’s pause for a second to revel in the fact that Tweet figured out how to explain the inheritance of shared derived traits to toddlers. It’s remarkable! And as if synapomorphies aren’t enough, the book includes a large evolutionary tree of life with instructions to “put your finger on any point along Grandmother Fish: I Used to be a Fish: Stephanie Keep National Center for Science Education Oakland, CA keep@ncse.com the pages within, we discovered “X-rays” (sliding image that shows a predator’s skeleton), hidden images (flaps that fold up or down to show the inside of the predator), and interesting facts about some amazing but deadly organisms. The book goes through thirteen categories of deadly organisms, presenting the top five of each category. The pictures are engaging, and the consistent arrangement of facts and use of type font enabled my son to anticipate information in each category. This made for some great questions and discussion. The graphics of how humans compare to the organisms, along with the lengths, had us pulling out our measuring tape to examine scale. One aspect of the book that bothered my son was the depiction of the snake with fangs sticking out. As I have a background in herpetology, we often have conversations about how snakes are depicted, and my son immediately noticed that the snake was pictured as “scary.” Granted the book is all about the world’s deadliest predators, but such images can feed people’s fear. The other disappointment was the lack of a deadliest insect page given that preying mantises were mentioned on the first page, though the spiders and scorpions were interesting. I did like how the book presented some well-known and some obscure organisms as this can broaden children’s understanding of biodiversity. In fact, my twelve-year-old daughter also read the book and ended up researching some of the unfamiliar organisms, which led to some great YouTube clips. Lacey Huffling lhuffling@georgiasouthern.edu Georgia Southern University 1332 Southern Drive Statesboro, GA 30458 OTHER BOOKS IN SERIES: SCAN-O-RAMA SERIES Scan-o-rama: Deadly Predators. By Anna Claybourne. 2016. Silver Dolphin Books. (ISBN 9781626866324). 32 pp. Hardcover. $18.99. The cover of Deadly Predators grabs the reader’s attention straightway with a partial X-ray image of a cheetah. My five-year-old son immediately reached for the book when he caught of a glimpse of the cover. As we began to explore THE AMERICAN BIOLOGY TEACHER Scan-o-rama: Amazing Animals. By Anna Claybourne. 2016. Silver Dolphin Books. (ISBN 9781626866317). 32 pp. Hardcover. $18.99. Scan-o-rama: Dinosaurs. By Anna Claybourne. 2016. Silver Dolphin Books. (ISBN 9781626866300). 32 pp. Hardcover. $18.99. I WONDER WHY SERIES Fragrant as a Flower. By Lawrence F. Lowery. 2017. National Science Teachers Association. (ISBN 9781681403533). 36 pp. Paperback. $11.95. Quiet as a Butterfly. By Lawrence F. Lowery. 2017. National Science Teachers Association. (ISBN 9781681403540). 36 pp. Paperback. $11.95. Look and See. By Lawrence F. Lowery. 2017. National Science Teachers Association. (ISBN 9781681403557). 33 pp. Paperback. $11.95. These three books are from the “I Wonder Why” series from NSTA. According to NSTA’s website, the “I Wonder Why” book series is “written to ignite the curiosity of children in grades K-6 while encouraging them to become avid readers.” There are a variety of topics in this series, including nature, measurements, plants, insects, and colors. Each book also has teaching tips for teachers and parents at the end. Fragrant as a Flower follows a boy as he visits locations around town, noticing each place’s unique smell. Some smells are pleasant—the flower shop, laundry, the bakery—while others are a little less nice, like the fish market, and “rubbish in a clump.” This book is written in rhyme, and although the father-son aspect of the story is sweet, the rest feels a bit forced. Imagining the smells of the pastry store and the fruit shop are reminiscent, but I don’t want to read this book with my children describing the pungent odor of hot tar or dirt being blown over the road. Quiet as a Butterfly again follows a boy as he goes through his day, both hearing things and not hearing things. “I can hear the clock ticking, birds singing, roosters crowing . . . Yellow butterfly, I wonder why I can’t hear you.” This book employs a repeating structure of “I can hear . . . ” followed by “ . . . I can’t hear you.” Some things the boy can’t hear include a flower and a puffy cloud, which don’t really make sounds, and other things like the butterfly and tiny ant are too quiet to hear. The lack of differentiation between the two frustrated me, but could spark a conversation with a young reader. Look and See presents the reader with fun illustrations of objects: a rolling pin, a striped box, a protractor. It asks, “What do you see when you look, when you look carefully?” Some BOOK REVIEWS 779 Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/abt/article-pdf/79/9/778/60230/abt_2017_79_9_778.pdf by guest on 09 June 2020 turns into a monkey, gets smarter, sheds his fur, tires of eating fruit and starts to hunt, eventually builds a house, and ends the book saying, “Who knows what’s next? Maybe I’ll fly—that’s my wish. Until then, I’ll have to settle for this. And the funny thing is, I used to be a fish” (pp. 36–40). Just from these short excerpts, it should be clear that I Used to be a Fish manages to perpetuate a dizzying number of misconceptions, all of which will have to be unlearned to ensure a firm grasp of evolution. After all, individuals do not evolve, evolution does not happen on demand or because it’d be cool to acquire a new trait, and evolution proceeds neither in a linear fashion nor inevitably toward humans. To his credit, author Tom Sullivan includes some material at the end of the book to try to correct the misconceptions his book just reinforced—but it’s too little too late. As a mother of young children, I can tell you that both books are engaging and your preschooler will be amused by both of them. But as an evolution educator, there is no comparison: Grandmother Fish is far superior. Indeed, I made a point to give copies of Grandmother Fish to my daughters’ preschool and kindergarten teachers, whereas I have permanently shelved I Used to be a Fish. Misconceptions about evolution are too common and too insidious to be taken lightly, even by children’s book authors.