“How was the world created?” is a common children’s question, one that Gordon Hunter has attempted to answer in his book Remembering Creation: From Mother Star to Babies.
Hunter, an award-winning biology professor, consultant for school teachers and U.S. Air Force radar instructor, picks up the story well after the Big Bang, beginning in the area of the Milky Way galaxy, with a cloud of hydrogen atoms. In short chapters, Hunter discusses the birth of the “Mother Star,” which eventually goes supernova and distributes the elements that will later result in the birth of our sun, the Earth, and life itself.
Remembering Creation is a non-fiction narrative that keeps the science simple, but doesn’t dumb it down. Marvin Alonso’s drawn illustrations are cartoony, showing full page, smiling, anthropomorphized versions of the Mother Star and our sun. But the more realistic photo-images of asteroids and craters, along with basic scientific illustrations—showing bacterial cells dividing, for example—seem more in tune with the book’s tone. Despite the cartoons, Hunter tries to describe the scientific processes without oversimplifying, so even a simple cell gets a detailed accounting:
“A living cell is a bubble, but it differs from air bubbles we make with soapy water. These have air on both sides of a soapy membrane. Living cells are bubbles with water on both sides of a fatty oil membrane.”
The boldfaced words make it a bit easier for young readers to follow, but Hunter writes in a way that’s both whimsical and complex—possibly an acquired taste. Though some may get lost in the details, for many children Remembering Creation will provide new information and a more sophisticated way of understanding science.
Also available as an ebook.
