In 'The whole soup mess', science journalist Floor Bal, together with illustrator Sebastiaan van Doninck, explains the entire history of the earth to toddlers. From the big bang to now. The drawings are beautiful, but explaining this subject to small children turns out to be quite difficult.
Get on it. Explaining the origin of the universe, the earth, the people and the rest to toddlers. Science journalist Floor Bal dared because when her then five-year-old son asked her how people had come to Earth, she could not find a single book in the bookstore that explains this at an appropriate level. “While there are 32 different Bibles for preschoolers, there is not a single book that explains the scientific ideas about the origin of the universe and life at their level,” Bal tells AdValvas, the platform of the Vrije Universiteit where she is an editor. That is why she decided to make it herself, together with illustrator Sebastiaan van Doninck.
Van Doninck's drawings are great and make the book. Whether it is a fish, the big bang or a pig, Van Doninck knows how to visualize it. The sea creatures are my favourite.
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Complicated matter in children's language
Personally, I'm less of a fan of the lyrics. Where books like “The riddle of everything that lives”, “A very short history of almost everything” and “From the big bang to robot” (suitable from about 10 to 12 years old) take 160, 176 and 96 pages respectively to explain how the universe, the earth and man came into existence, Bal had to do it in 32 pages. In less than 200 short sentences. That is quite little to explain quite complicated matter in child language. Then you have to leave out a lot, with the chance that it occasionally becomes too short. And that unfortunately happens a few times.
For example, Bal writes that a fish can eat more and is eaten less quickly if it 'has fins that work like legs'. But I don't think that's such a logical reasoning. And after writing that some fish live longer, she writes "that's how the family adapts." Then suddenly there is a new species. Obviously, concepts like mutation, adaptation, and natural selection are explained here in a few sentences, but as far as I'm concerned it's moving too fast. Living longer doesn't necessarily mean a species is adapting. And it's not clear to what the species adapts to. By including adaptation and adaptation, I think the writer wants to be correct, but with sentences like this, she actually raises questions.
A creator
The pages depicting the arrival of the dinosaurs are beautiful, but phrases like "a dinosaur's toe is the size of a turtle" and "the starfish shares the water with a basking shark" are a bit silly without explanatory illustrations. If you have to be careful with your sentences, these could have been omitted.
Bal writes several times 'it is time that...'. Who thinks it's time for that new step? The narrator. But you can also read it as if there is a thought behind the evolution, as if it is being directed. And I don't think the writer wants to say that in a book about the origin of the earth and its inhabitants.
Human and animal
The last ten pages are devoted to human evolution. And there too it is a bit sloppy here and there. For example, it says that the apes change from the hot food, and from all that thinking their heads grow "and whatever's in it." This makes them smarter. But that suggests that the animals with the biggest brains are also the smartest animals. In that case, that would be the sperm whale, and not the human.
A real mistake is that about the origin of man it is written that they are no longer animals, but people. Because people are really animals.
This is a valiant effort and a beautifully designed book. I agree with the author that such a book should be made. With this publication you can certainly explain a few things to children about the origin of the earth and it can form the basis for a conversation. But if you want to explain something to toddlers about evolution, you have to add something here and there yourself.