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Amazing Evolution The Journey of Life - Anna Claybourne

What makes a fish a fish? Why do giraffes have such long necks? Evolution holds the answers to these and many more questions about life on Earth. 


Amazing Evolution is without a doubt one of the most valuable non-fiction books I have in my collection and one which I've used time and time again in the classroom. As a Year 6 teacher the topic of evolution is a huge part of our science curriculum and it's one that prompts so many questions from the children. This was partly the reason I first bought myself this book since I just didn't have the knowledge to answer them all! 

Amazing Evolution's pages are filled with facts presented in the most beautiful way by the illustrator, Wesley Robbins. It covers the basics of what evolution actually is, the different ages on Earth, how we evolved and are we still evolving, as well as introducing the key individuals involved in the science such as Dawin, Wallace and Mary Anning. Each fact is presented in a child (and adult!) friendly format, alongside an illustration and lots of easy to understand diagrams too. 


As a tool in the classroom it's brilliant and we have dipped in and out of this throughout our evolution topic, some days using a page as a basis of discussion and other days just reading it for pleasure and marvelling about the facts that we didn't know. Like most non-fiction books it has a jam-packed glossary at the back which we've used in class to help us understand the trickier words around the topic. 

I find so much science at UKS2 is often a huge topic that you have to cram in to a short amount of time, but Amazing Evolution really does this justice and it's perfect for explaining the science simply. I know that I've struggled in the past to explain some of the difficult concepts introduced in evolution without garbling on too much - so this is brilliant if like me you want to increase your confidence in delivering science lessons. 

A brilliant illustrated explanation of evolution.

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