I have a novel out in January, a dark, psychological thriller, and to my delight, my lovely publishers have agreed to use an image I created (or, in olden days speak, a picture I painted) as a line drawing at the start of certain key chapters, where the image - which is of a
peppered moth - applies.
Moth: An Evolution Story is an educational children's picturebook about how a species of "
peppered moth" effectively demonstrates the scientific concepts of evolution and natural selection.
My moth trap has been yielding a number of very interesting specimens, including this
peppered moth, which I managed to photograph.
They will be exploring aspects of evolution, from the
peppered moth to Darwin's finches and how soil pollution can rapidly alter plants.
The use of monochrome with accent colours at key points of the narrative make this book visually appealing and cement it as a multi-modal text explaining the rise and fall of the two varieties of the
Peppered moth: the light form, and the dark form.
It tells the story of how the
peppered moth, with its speckled wings, evolves.
The phenomenon is a classic example of natural selection, and one of the best-known cases " the spread of the dark version of the
peppered moth in sooty 19th-century Britain " is often quoted in biology textbooks.
Caption: As soot settled onto trees in Britain during the Industrial Revolution, a black version of the
peppered moth started to overtake the mottled-wing form.
It found the same "cortex" gene that enables tropical butterflies to mimic each other's bright and colourful patterns also darkened the
peppered moth in the UK.
Both ape and
peppered moth allude to Darwin's theory of evolution and the survival of the fittest--the evolution of the
peppered moth as a consequence of industrial pollution is the first recorded case of the scientist's theory of natural selection in action.
In The
Peppered Moth (2001), she wrote brutally about her mother's depression; in Jerusalem the Golden (* JAMES TAIT BLACK MEMORIAL PRIZE, 1967), a girl leaves her unhappy home to attend a university.