A devoted family man, Charles Darwin allowed his children to provide the artwork on his original draft of “On the Origin of Species.”

A little more than 150 years after its initial publication, a kid-friendly illustrated Mandarin translation for other interested youngsters is selling out all over China.

This children’s publication first crawled onto the shelves as a result of a lecture by Desui Miao on Charles Darwin at Beijing’s National Zoological Museum. A 10-year-old boy raised his hand to ask a question.

He’d enjoyed the author’s talk about his academic translation of “On the Origin of Species,” the boy said, but had not understood everything. Could Miao write another book, this one for Chinese kids?

“I cavalierly said, ‘Sure.’ I didn’t know what this all entailed. But how can you say ‘no’ to a kid?” said Miao, the collections manager at Kansas University’s Biodiversity Institute. But the point of his China tour was to promote his more conventional, academic translation.

Then the question came up again after the session, this time from an attending journalist, who promised to find a publisher. That turned out to be Jieli Publishing House, one of the leading producers of children’s books in China.

The first printing of the illustrated kids’ version sold out in less than four months, the same for a reprinting. All told more than 20,000 copies have been sold since January. More.

See: The Kansas City Star

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