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Gr 4-Up Sis offers an impressive homage to the life and ideas of Darwin through a fully illustrated, multilayered narrative augmented with copious charts, maps, and sketches. Two strands of text recounting Darwin's youth from his own and his father's points of view run below picture blocks in several early pages. Soon smaller chunks of text, often taken from Darwin's journals, move across the spreads with a central image and copious small, framed vignettes and picture bits. Other pages are filled completely with rows of picture cards. The...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

Sís translates Darwin's written legacy into visual narrative in an extraordinary book that explores Darwin's life, work, and sources of inspiration. Four pages depicting Darwin's childhood revolve around a sense of place, with each page containing a large circular illustration that moves readers from home to boarding school to medical school to Cambridge University. While the large circles suggest confinement, this sense is lessened by four smaller circles, one on each of the four quadrants of the page, that indicate influences on the young Charles, such as parents and grandfathers surrounding Darwin at home and four mentors anchoring him at Cambridge. The text in this early section consists of two complementary voices: h...Log In or Sign Up to Read More