As a young boy, Charles Darwin hated school and was often scolded forconducting "useless" experiments. Yet his passion for the natural world was so strong that he suffered through terrible seasickness during his five-year voyage aboard The Beagle. Darwin collected new creatures from the coasts of Africa, South America, and the Galapagos Islands, and expanded his groundbreaking ideas that would change people's understanding of the natural world. About 100 illustrations and a clear, exciting text will make Darwin and his theory of evolution an exciting discovery for every young reader.

作者简介

Deborah Hopkinson is the author of more than 40 books for young readers including picture books, short fiction, and nonfiction. Her historical fiction picture books often illuminate the lives of ordinary people or forgotten figures in history. She has won the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for picture book text twice. A frequent speaker in schools and conferences, she works to help bring history alive and encourage young readers to practice critical thinking and historical thinking skills.

Deborah’s award-winning works include Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, winner of the 1994 International Reading association Award; A Band of Angels, an ALA Notable title which also won the Golden Kite Award and was a Jane Addams award honor book; Under the Quilt of Night, winner of the Washington State Book Award, Bluebird Summer, a Golden Kite Award Honor Book, and Girl Wonder, winner of the Great Lakes Book Award and a 2004 Jane Addams Award honor book.

Her 2006 book, Sky Boys, How They Built the Empire State Building, was an ALA Notable and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor book, while Up Before Daybreak, Cotton and People in America, won a Carter G. Woodson Award and an ALA Notable book. Shutting out the Sky, Life in the Tenements of New York 1880-1924, was an honor book for the NCTE Orbis Pictus award, a Jane Addams Award honor book, an IRA Teachers’ Choice, and a James Madison Award Honor Book. Apples to Oregon won the Golden Kite Award and Spur Storytelling Award and was an ALA Notable book.

Sweet Land of Liberty was named an IRA Teachers Choice and a Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People 2008 . Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek, a Junior Library Guild Selection, published in Fall 2008, received three starred reviews and was an ALA Notable book and was named winner of the Comstock Award.

A three-time Oregon Book Award finalist, she won in 2009, receiving the Eloise Jarvis McGraw Award in 2009 for Keep On! The Story of Matthew Henson, Co-Discoverer of the North Pole. Also in 2009 Home on the Range, John Lomax and His Cowboy Songs, received two starred reviews and was a Junior Library Guild Selection, as was Stagecoach Sal, which was named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2009. Other new books in 2009 included Michelle and First Family, both illustrated by AG Ford. In 2010 Deborah published The Humblebee Hunter, about Charles Darwin and his children, which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

Deborah received a bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Massachusetts and holds a master’s degree in Asian Studies from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She lives near Portland, Oregon, where she serves as Vice President for College Advancement for the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

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精彩书评

On February 12, 1809, two epoch-making men were born: Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. Mention of Darwin the person become tangled so frequently in discussions of his evolutionary theory that many young people never receive a proper introduction to this fascinating man. Deborah Hopkinson's Who Was Charles Darwin? shows that even great thinkers were once little boys who enjoyed hunting bugs more than schoolwork. This "kiddie" biography can even teach adults new things about the great biologist.