Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Non-fiction book review - Smart and Spineless


Title: Smart and Spineless
Author: Ann Downer

Personally, I'd never really considered the intellectual capacity of most animals, not to mention invertebrates (apart from jellyfish - I'd wondered on more than one occasion how they can even live without brains and with so little body structure). This book was, therefore, pretty eyeopening. It really challenges our perceptions of what makes something intelligent. If worms, with only two brain cells, are capable of learning, we have no choice but to look at all life differently going forward. While the ideas in this book are surprisingly thought-provoking, the vocabulary and the sentence structure is rather easy to understand. Really, it's a good choice for upper elementary school and middle grade kids just looking to learn a few facts about some animals.

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