The first little bits to leave lasting marks,
as physical forms of those energy sparks,
are still around now, and they call themselves Quarks.
Bottom and Top and Charm and Strange,
into Up and Down they mostly will change.
These six different flavors are able to mix.
And these six, when they mix, can do all sorts of tricks!

That’s a short excerpt from James Lu Dunbar’s charming new comic book BANG! The Universe Verse, Book 1. It’s a thirty-page painless introduction to the Big Bang for kids and adults.

I bought a copy of this book (even though you can read the whole thing online) because as soon as I saw it, I knew my kids would love it. And I was right.

My kids love science, and in particular, they’d learned a bit about subatomic particles and the Big Bang from watching science videos on YouTube (their idea not mine). Still — like a lot of kids of this generation — they’re not all that interested in books because books aren’t as exciting as the Internet. This book has been a step in the right direction for us. We’ve read it together as a family several times, and the clever rhymes and pictures drew the kids in.

I asked my kids what they liked from the book, and both kids remembered the verse “assuming, of course, that you are prepared for E to equal M C squared.” They both liked the visual presentation with the words “to equal” in the equals sign.

If you know the basic story of the Big Bang (the various forces and how the different types of matter formed), it’s fun to anticipate some of the rhymes, for example: “As it cooled down further there came the first splatter of what was to come just a split second latter — a new form of energy: the first-ever MATTER.” And even if you know very little physics, it’s accessible enough that you won’t get lost or bored. And it may well whet your appetite to learn more!

This is an interesting article on the state of some children’s books from the New Yorker Magazine:

http://tinyurl.com/ylxmr7q

Why, it’s simple! Go to Charlie’s Playhouse! They have an online toy store that sells games and toys inspired by Darwin. They have compiled a very helpful pdf  list of children’s books about evolution and Darwin, most of which are available on Amazon. And they have started a blog, aimed at giving us parents info on interesting evolution-themed topics, that we can pass on to our families. Your one-stop evolution shop!

Founder Kate Miller, Ph.D., is a mother and a scientist who started Charlie’s Playhouse to provide evolution-themed toys because, the website states, “there aren’t any. Our children deserve to know about the dazzling history of life on this planet.”

They currently offer three toys (teaching aids) in their product line-up. Their flagship product is the the 18-foot-long Giant Timeline that allows kids to skip and jump through the 600-million-year history of life. Alternatively, they offer the smaller Giant Timeline Poster, which has a similar graphic of 67 animals in the fossil record, but is sized to hang on a wall. Finally, they offer the Ancient Creature flash cards, each with an illustration and fun facts about a fossil from the Giant Timeline. Besides toys, they also offer some cool cafe press junk, including kids’ shirts that say “Product of Natural Selection”.

I haven’t ordered anything from the site yet, but I think a Giant Timeline is definitely in our future. And I plan to show it to Little Skeptic Girl’s second-grade teacher to see if she’d like to borrow it to use in her class. (I won’t bother offering it to Little Skeptic Boy’s preschool teacher, though.) I also will use the book list to help me find some evolution-themed books for my kids, since we don’t have any in our house. (Which is shocking and distressing, since we have a huge collection of children’s books.)

I’m really enjoying the blog, and have added it to my feed-reader. I’ve learned about all sorts of fossil animals, including a turtle with no top shell, and a cat-sized frog called “Beelzebufo”. Fun stuff!

But don’t take my word for it. Check out Charlie’s Playhouse yourself.