I think this is an extremely relevant topic and I think the author does a good job of contextualizing it for kids in 2023. It's just a bit dry and the block quotes aren't so clearly connected to the text by the author. However, I envision some great discussion and interest from kids as part of reading material for a class curriculum.

<I>I was given a free eARC by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review</i>

I picked this one up because I always intend to read more nonfiction, and then I get overwhelmed by the fact that so much nonfiction ends up either being a doorstop or a terrible slog (or both). Narrative nonfiction is my jam, but it’s hard to find. Good narrative nonfiction for kids is an even more difficult needle to thread - you want it to be approachable for a young audience, but you don’t want to patronize them. I feel like Sanchez does this pretty well. It’s hard to tell in ebook form, but I’m guessing there are charts and visuals interspersed with the actual narrative (some of the graphics were incomplete in the version I read - and some would just appear seemingly at random in the middle of a paragraph. It’s also hard to lay out something like this in electronic form. I’m excited to get my hands on the library copy I ordered to see how it looks in print).

The writing style is informative, but compelling. It reads like a narrative rather than a textbook. And although it would be SO easy to soapbox about how similar this case is to problems we are somehow STILL facing nearly 100 years later, Sanchez resists that impulse until the very end. (And it’s not really soapboxing, but she does point out the irony of having written about a famous case where people denied science during the height of Covid). There’s also so much about this case that I didn’t know. My background was “something something, evolution and Clarence Darrow”. I remembered nothing about William Jennings Bryan being involved, and I actually didn’t realize that Scopes volunteered for the trial as a test case. The hope was that he would be found guilty, so that the appeals process could go all the way to the Supreme Court and find the actual law unconstitutional. Scopes and his students weren’t even 100% certain that he had used the word “evolution” in class. I guess I had always assumed this was a case of parents stirring things up and putting him on trial. I had no idea he went (semi)willingly!

It’s truly eerie to read about the arguments for and against teaching actual science, as well as the arguments for “protecting children” from inappropriate material. Seeing all of the school and public libraries that are currently under attack in the name of “protecting children,” it’s sad to see how far we haven’t come. There were multiple quotes in this book that could have been about current events - particularly Dudley Field Malone’s speech.

The resources at the back of the book are what really make this a class friendly text for teaching our Evidence of Evolution unit. As a HS biology teacher, I appreciated how the topic was written about in student friendly language with relatively little bias (for or against the idea) from Sanchez. Wonderful text for helping students draw their own conclusions while hitting home why its an important topic.

I would actually love to see an educator PD on this book and how we can navigate teaching evolution in our classrooms while being inclusive of all student backgrounds.

Thank you Netgalley and the Publisher for the ARC. I am leaving my review voluntarily.

After teaching a biology class in Tennessee in 1925, John Scopes was arrested and put on trial for the crime of teaching Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Extensive back matter includes source notes, bibliography, timeline, glossary of legal terms and photos.