Children’s Book Review: *What Darwin Saw* by Rosalyn Schanzer

What Darwin Saw: The Journey That Changed the World by Rosalyn Schanzer
Reading level: Ages 9-12
Hardcover: 48 pages
Publisher: National Geographic Children’s Books (January 13, 2009)
ISBN-13: 978-1426303968

Back-of-the-book blurb: In 1831 a 22-year-old naturalist named Charles Darwin stepped aboard the HMS Beagle as a traveling companion of an equally youthful sea captain called Robert FitzRoy. The Beagle’s round-the-world surveying journey lasted five long years on the high seas. The young Darwin noticed everything, and proved himself an avid and detailed chronicler of daily events on the Beagle and onshore. What Darwin Saw takes young readers back to the pages of his journals as they travel alongside Darwin and read his lively and awestruck words about the wonders of the world.

She is Too Fond of Books’ review: What Darwin Saw is an informative and important account of Darwin’s journey exploring and cataloging natural specimens on a nearly-five-year sea voyage around the world.  Many of us associate Darwin with The Origin of the Species, the theory of natural selection, and his work on the Galapagos Islands.  This illustrated book goes beyond the basics to show how Darwin gathered data along every stop of the route, allowing him to compare similar species in various settings, arousing his curiosity, and searching for an explanation.

Darwin didn’t set out to turn the world’s accepted view of creation on its head.  In fact, he didn’t publish his findings for nearly twenty years, because he knew it would cause an uproar.  Rather, traveling as a naturalist on the voyage, he was able to make observations and gather the data which led to the formation of his famous theory.

Rosalyn Schanzer has a unique approach to sharing Darwin’s story:  Her watercolor illustrations vividly show the details of specimens Darwin collected during his travels on the Beagle.  About half the text quotes directly from Darwin’s papers, allowing the reader to share the experience in his words (spelling and punctuation has been updated, but wording is verbatim).  Darwin’s words are easily discerned from other speaker’s words and the author’s text because they each have a unique color and typeface.

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The book is laid out in a graphic “comic book” style, with dialogue boxes, sidebars, and a sequential story board.  Schanzer’s detailed drawings add another dimension to the reading pleasure and the learning process. The suggested age range is 9-12 years, which seems about right.  Although my 7-year-old sat for some of the book, and really liked the illustrations, there is so much information in here that she couldn’t sit for it all.  We’re calling it a Magic School Bus for older kids … without Ms. Frizzle and the bus!

Rosalyn Schanzer has an interesting, six-degrees-of-separation type, connection to Darwin.  Her grandfather worked alongside Clarence Darrow during the Scopes trial of 1925.  He was an expert witness in the Old Testament, and helped fashion the questions that would eventually trap the attorney for the prosecution, William Jennings Bryan, into admitting that “the Bible could not always be interpreted literally and that every living thing on Earth could not have been created in six days a few thousand years ago.”  This line of interrogation, and the trial as a whole, helped gain widespread acceptance of Darwin’s theory.  Schanzer mentions this connection only in the dedication; this piqued her interest in Darwin at an early age.

In researching for What Darwin Saw, she not only travelled to South America, taking over 3000 photos of the areas Darwin saw, she also read Darwin’s books, journals, and letters, and studied other commentary on the theory of evolution.  What Darwin Saw is a well-researched book of non-fiction; accessible and highly ‘readable’ for the middle reader.  I especially appreciate that she showed the many steps of the journey, not simply focusing on the islands in the Galapagos archipelago; this teaches our children (and us!) that time, patience, and often a series of trial and errors are required for large projects.

More information about the author and her books can be found on Rosalyn Shanzer’s website.  Click on her photos link to view a slide show of beautiful pictures she took while researching What Darwin Saw.

FTC disclosure: review copy provided by an independent publicist.