Tired of stuffing your kids with delusions and superstitions? Try this instead: Richard’s new children’s book, due out this fall. (Click to enlarge.)
Courtesy the Dawkins Foundation Website.
Dawkins’s children’s book
May 17, 2011 • 6:18 pm
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Ooh! Me want! There should be a Storytime With Grandpa Dawkins video where he reads to a bunch of rugrats. We could expect more intelligent questions than from creationists too!
I hope he mentions cicadas.
Speaking of cicadas…
http://blog.coturnix.org/2011/05/16/cicadas-or-how-i-am-such-a-scientist-or-a-demonstration-of-good-editing/
Thanks! Cicada predation and copulation cycles should be mandatory reading for all ages.
Do not forget other species of insect with similar periodicity exist like the Scarabaeidae – stag beetles & cockchafers for example. They have become quite rare because of pesticides but I saw a cockchafer (aka a ‘May’ bug) a couple of weeks ago, though sadly dead 🙁
I wonder if there will be brouhaha over this book? “NO! NOT THE CHILDREN!” kind of thing?
I have to admit a feeling of unease — a kind of vicarious fear, actually — about the possibility that Richard will be subject to accusations of child indoctrination. But I’m sure he’s up to the challenge. 🙂
In fact, I’m more than willing to bet he’s actually HOPING for such accusations.
It would be wonderfully rich fodder.
Well, not really. He is hardly going around schools using a regulated session to ram his non-magic book down the throats of the kiddies while imbuing them with fear if they don’t understand and embrace evolution
I just hope that school libraries stock numerous copies of the book for class room use.
que bueno que ahora R:D: brinde un libro ilustrado para los niños y niñas ojala llegue traducido pronto.
Considering that all his previous books were translated into Spanish, it’s quite probable this one will be, too.
It looks beautiful, and if it’s anywhere near as thick as the book on the jacket appears, it ought to be a real treasure.
I pre-ordered a Kindle and a hardcover copy.
I must have one! I wants one!
*ahem* For my nephew, of course 😉
Yes, we will probably find a ‘Harry Potter’ effect! Though I think that if it is aimed at the right level, it is the type of book that a parent might learn from if their child has it. We should have a “sponsor a book for every chld” scheme.
Exactly what I was thinking:-) I fully intend to get a copy as soon as it comes out for….my kids. Yeah–my kids (me!)
ooh, using Dave McKean for the illustrations too.
this is a keeper.
Thanks! I didn’t want to be the only one getting geeky about that.
Yep, any book illustrated by Dave McKean is worth buying!
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Can’t wait to show this one to my daughter. It’ll be one for our collection.
Nice cover.
I bet that a lot of adults could read this children’s book and learn something.
I bet that a lot of adults could read this “children’s book” and learn something.
I predict a lot of adults will read this book and learn something!
I predict some creationist will try to read this book, but will find it too difficult.
Maybe…but I have a feeling it was written with that very idea in mind (of reaching adults via their children).
Oh how beautiful!!! Definitely getting that for my lil one (will be a “for later” book as he is currently ‘The Destroyer of All that is Paper’). Will be a good tool along with ‘Raising Freethinkers’ and ‘Parenting Beyond Belief’.
My kid will love it. Recent conversation:
Mom: It’s dark now and the sun went down, so it’s time for bed.
3-year-old: No mama! It’s dark because the sun is behind the eorth! [sic]
Which reminds me of the story of the primary school kid who answered, “yes,” to the question, “does the Sun shine at night?” — and was marked wrong!
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Oh, this is going to be just perfect!
This autumn? Shit.
That’s not giving a lot of notice for those of us who don’t already have kids, but love Richard Dawkins and Dave McKean.
Now, where did I put that instruction booklet for making a new human?
As Dave Barry said, you can do it in just nine months, with tools you probably already have around the house.
Yeah… but it doesn’t usually work out as a DIY project.
🙂 x2
Parthenogenesis would have made life so much simpler…
Why do I get the feeling this book is some sort of response to creationism, rather than just a book about how the world (as we understand it through science) works?
And whats with this: “real world”, “magic of reality”, “wonderful because real” – stuff.. It just gives me bad taste in my mouth when reading it.
Obvious troll is obvious.
Try mouthwash for your halitosis problem.
I’m not a troll.
Wefijim – this book has been at least two years in the making and I am sure its genesis was much earlier than that.
RD said years ago that he wanted to write a children’s book – this is it. We afficiandos have been waiting for this for ages.
Pity my children are all grown up and have read The Selfish Gene!! Hahahaha
Oh, I don’t know. You mentioned creationism and don’t seem to like statements about reality.
Sounds like a troll to me.
I’m not a troll either, and I can understand the sentiment. It’s the fact that it’s a science book that touts itself about being real… I have never seen a science book that felt the need to point out that it wasn’t made up. It felt like there was a parenthetical aside somewhere in there: “(as opposed to religion)”.
I don’t have a problem with it, and I don’t think kids would pick up on the subtext, but I can understand the uneasiness.
Cool story, troll!
Want book. Want.
This will be perfect for our little girl’s first birthday. 🙂
So–one day she can legitimately say, “I cut my teeth on Dawkins?”
(Hugs to your little darlin’!)
My one year old rips the spines out board books and peels the cardboard layers apart. I just can’t give him anything as delicate as “paper” yet.
I wonder what age group it’s appropriate for?
It’s ok–you can have one, too;-)
😉 I plan to. I was more thinking of my niece and nephew.
No, I am not tired of “of stuffing my kids with delusions and superstitions,” but I will get them Dawkins’s book because it looks like fun.
Should I get my kids when they are teenagers Helen Fisher’s “Why We Love” instead of, say, the delusionally romantic Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin”?
I wonder if this will finally unseat “And Tango Makes Three” as the ALA’s most frequently challenged book.
If you follow the link to to the Foundation’s website, you’ll see the US cover. Ugh. You have illustrations by Dave McKean and THAT is the cover? It looks like a Successories poster…Looks like I’ll be buying this through Amazon UK.
Aw, crum, you’re right! What a shame.
Just pre-ordered 2 copies for young fellows I care about.
A good book to leave in hotel rooms, perhaps – in the drawer with the Gideon Bible? How long will we have to wait for a paperback version to keep the cost down, I wonder?
I can think of a religious-minded adult relation I’ll buy this for, too – someone who hasn’t the attention span to read anything with normally-dense text. The remaining problem will be to get a book with “Richard Dawkins” written on it past their self-censorship mechanism.
Should my local library manage to survive the current round of budget cuts I’ll be donating a copy to them.
If they don’t, maybe I’ll just keep it for myself.
Dave McKean! Dawkins gets one of the world’s best illustrators at the top of his game. So amazing. Can’t wait for this.
I want to stand around and hand them on street corners. I want to go door-to-door and ask people if they’ve seen this good book. I want to –uh-oh.
Buying copies for my son and nephew.
THEY are not going to like it! But it’s about time someone takes the rhinoceros by the horn(s)because this is bigger than any bull. THEY start brainwashing them from the crib with ritual, then tell them the good stories from the Bible instead of reading to them about wholesale killing, incest and murder of your brother. At least Richard ‘puts the truth in writing” and if they are old enough to read can read get it firsthand and make their own decision.
This looks absolutely awful. Are atheists going to become like Jehovah’s Witnesses? I despise it on sight. It looks like the kind of thing you’re *forced* to read as a kid because your parents think it’s good for you. Yuck! I’ll look at it when it comes out but from this distance, it looks like crap, the kind of crap well-meaning adults who know zero about writing for young readers crank out because they have an “issue” they want to foist in kids. Just my opinion…
It is not all that new of an idea. I had Disney encyclopedias as a kid. People seem to be excited about this book, but there does not appear to be a chapter called Why God is nonsense. It just explains things that are often snatched by delusionists. It would make a good X-mas gift for all and sundry.