Darwin and Evolution for Kids: His Life and Ideas, with 21
Activities By Kristan Lawson Chicago Review Press, $16.95 Darwin
and Evolution for Kids: His Life and Ideas with 21 Activities
The evolution debate is like a school-yard brawl that breaks out
around the monkey bars: Curses are hurled, punches are thrown,
and no one is willing to listen. Indeed, rational argument seems
strangely absent from campaigns such as the one waged last year
in Texas, which demanded that the state board of education ditch
texts that fail to teach the “weaknesses of evolutionary
theory.” It’s a fine time, therefore, for a book that shows in
lively detail just how Charles Darwin arrived at his theory of
evolution—through careful collection of evidence from around the
world, followed by 20 years of meticulous research that finally
led him to publish, in 1859, On the Origin of Species. Darwin
for Kids focuses foremost on the great naturalist’s five-year
voyage aboard the HMS Beagle and later on his intellectual
odyssey. As Lawson ex