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! ( )