The Story of Life ─ A First Book About Evolution

At first, nothing lived on Earth. It was a noisy, hot, scary place. Choking gas exploded from volcanoes and oceans of lava bubbled around the globe... Then in the deep, dark ocean, something amazing happened. This is an exciting and dramatic story about how life began and developed on Planet Earth, written especially for younger children.

The authors explain how the first living cell was created, and how the cells multiply and create jellyfish and worms, and then fish with bendy necks, which drag themselves out of the water into swampy forests. They tell the story of the biggest creatures that have ever walked on land - the dinosaurs. Long after that, hairy creatures who have babies, not eggs, take over, stand on two legs and spread around the world, some of them living through cataclysmic events such as ice ages and volcanic eruptions. Everyone living today is related to these survivors. With delightful illustrations including lots of detail and humour, all carefully researched and checked, this book shows the development of life on Earth in a truly accessible and simple way.

Catherine Barr has a degree in Ecology, and also trained as a journalist. She worked for seven years at Greenpeace as a wildlife and forestry campaigner and has a long-running interest in environmental and social issues. She has also been an editor at the Natural History Museum, where she researched and wrote two major summer exhibitions: Dinosaurs of the Gobi Desert and Myths and Monsters. She now works for the communications company bwa design, based in Hay-on-Wye. She lives near Hay with her partner and two daughters.

Steve Williams is an environmental biologist with a degree in Marine Biology and Applied Zoology from the University of Wales. His lifelong love of wildlife was further inspired by eight years at sea in the Royal Navy, after which he trained as a teacher, he teaches science in a rural comprehensive school in Wales. He lives near Hay-on-Wye with his wife and two daughters.