Books that I Have Requested a Formal Re-evaluation of at my Local Library

1. It was on the new book shelf by the checkout desk on the ground floor. I picked it up, and thought the illustrations rather ugly. But it was during the shutdown, and there was a certain, "you touch it, you check it out" mentality at the time. So I checked it out and then ended up reading it.

2. I read the whole book.

3. A significant false statement. At the end of the book, in what is essentially the end matter, there is a capsule biography of Charles Darwin's wife, Emma. It states that she died before "The Origin of Species" was published. This is not true. She outlived him by quite a number of years.

4. I read the work and concluded from this, and other evidence in other books, that getting the basic facts correct is becoming more and more optional in children's books. The mistake in this book is so simple that even a child can grasp it, so that's why I focus on it in particular. The presence of the mistake seems to indicate that the author wasn't particularly interested in the subject matter; most people who know anything about Darwin know that his wife outlived him and wouldn't make that mistake. So it marks a trend of hiring people to write about things that don't particularly interest them and that they don't really know much about. Then editors who are in the same situation, do the editing, and don't catch the error. Then reviewers who also don't know anything about the subject matter review the book favorably, and then librarians make the purchase. (My hypothesis about the source of the mistake is that the author took careless notes on the Darwin Wikipedia page and confused Darwin's wife, Emma, with his daughter, Anne, who did indeed die before the publication of "The Origin".)

5. I would like the library to remove this book from the collection. To leave it in would indicate a casualness about basic facts which is unsuitable for a children's book collection.

6. This is a strange question, as it requires me to guess what you think the topic of the book is. I'll try a few topics: a. The life of Charles Darwin. Well the library already has a really good book on this, with excellent illustrations, by Peter Sis, "The Tree of Life"[2]. I read this a long time ago, but there is a really dramatic illustration of a teenage Darwin at medical school running aghast out of an operating theatre that stuck with me. Kathryn Lasky's "One Beetle too Many" may be good. I haven't read it, but her biography of Eratosthenes was ok. b. Victorians who did stuff about evolution. Well, the library lacks any children's biographies of Alfred Russel Wallace, the other lesser known Victorian evolutionist. I can partly recommend "Darwin's Rival: Alfred Russel Wallace and the Search for Evolution " which has no factual errors that I'm aware of, excellent illustrations, and only one glaring malapropism. The library already has "The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins" about the sculptor who built the Crystal Palace dinosaurs which is actually quite good[3] and has excellent illustrations. c. Victorian scientists. Unfortunately the other outstanding scientists of Darwin's era are much neglected, especially in children's books. No books about John Herschel, no books about David Brewster. Looks like there's a book or two about Charles Babbage. That might be worth trying, but I can't recommend any children's biography of Babbage personally. d. Great scientists who did extensive ocean voyages. Well, the one who immediately springs to my mind is Edmond Halley, but I doubt you'll find much on him written for children, which is quite sad, really, since his life would make an excellent subject for a children's book. You might have better luck w/ Alexander von Humboldt; the MVLC seems to have a few children's books about him, but I can't recommend any book in particular.

SupplementaryMaterial

Thanks for the info. I realized that there were a bunch of other false facts that I had forgotten, so I'm supplementing here with the quotation from my review of the book. Here's the whole thing, including the additional factual errors.

I didn't have the heart to give it half a star as the illustrator really does seem to have made a reasonable effort and done some research. But the author and the editor are probably 30ish, their education has left them ignorant of the meaning of words and the importance of facts. Even now, in spite of efforts of people like them, "incredibly" still has a connotation or association of belief, it's not just a longer synonym for "very".

Factual inaccuracies abound. "Both William Herschel, a widely respected astronomer of the time, and Wilfred Owen were highly unimpressed by Darwin's theory." William Herschel died in 1822, "The Origin of Species" was published in 1859. The book surely means John Herschel, William's son, also an astronomer of some repute. Wilfred Owen was a WWI poet, and he wasn't born until 1893, decades after the book's publication. The author intends, no doubt, Richard Owen, no relation of Wilfred, the famous naturalist. It gets worse when we reach the capsule biography of Emma Darwin, Charles's wife, in the back. "They had ten children and he hoped she would edit 'On the Origin of Species'. Unfortunately she died before he had finished writing it, but their daughter Henrietta edited some of his later work." Emma, in fact, survived Charles by a number of years. These are such basic facts that no person setting out to write a biography of Charles Darwin for children should get them wrong. What a decadent age we live in!

Addendum: There is no evidence that Charles wanted Emma to edit his work. However, he thought he might die, and so in his will, he put a provision about her somehow getting whatever he had on the Origin of Species at the time he died into book form. I don't know the details of all that, but editing science stuff was not her thing.

Outcome

The book was removed from the library's collection.

I noticed that even Kirkus Reviews didn't think highly of the book, although the reviewer was not attentive enough or knowledgeable enough to detect the factual errors: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/david-long/when-darwin-sailed-the-sea/