2.30pm, Tuesday, the bookshop of the Natural History Museum. Horrible Science: Blood, Bones and Body Bits is being leafed through by one of its typical readers. In other words he’s 45, six-foot-three and has a full beard.
One of the greatest joys of parenthood is the excuse it gives you to abandon ‘proper’, grown-up science books, and get stuck into those aimed at your child. I’m at the museum with my 3-year-old son, who has just shrieked ecstatically at the huge dinosaur in the main hall, and is now eagerly sizing up a T-rex sticker book. One of his Christmas presents was Big Questions from Little People Answered by Some Very Big People (scientists and writers dealing with kids’ queries). We have delighted in the tale of Wilson Bentley, the first man to realise that no two snowflakes are alike, though were saddened at the tale’s conclusion (1931, another flake-collecting expedition, Bentley catches a chill and dies).
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