HOW HEREDITY WORKS: Why Living Things Are the Way They Are Parents' Magazine

Elephants make elephants. Ladybugs make ladybugs. Owls make owls, and eels make eels. People make people. Ferns make ferns and grass makes new grass. . ."" and so on reiterated until readers can't escape learning that like produces like. Variations within each species are also inherited and all plants and animals inherit special traits, but people can think and learn so that not everything about you is inherited. There are also a few words on cells and genes, sperm and eggs, generations (a trait might skip one), differences within a family, and, at the end, the influence of ""outside things."" (This last helps clarify what might have been an occasional misleading sentence earlier on, but the heading ""Can outside things change heredity?"" introduces communication problems of its own) This is probably the sort of general and simple introduction that primary school teachers want -- though of course it has nothing like the style and subtlety and potential for turning kids on of Charlotte Pomerantz's Why You Look Like You (KR, 1969).