The Cartoon Guide to Genetics

Larry Gonick

As adults, we sometimes forget that the way things are presented to kids will not only help kids understand things, but may also help adults who've never read up on a subject. Taking a vastly complex topic like genetics and boiling it down into something that a layman can understand is not an easy task at all. Sometimes, putting it in a format geared for kids helps, and still makes something worthy for adults to read.

The Cartoon Guide to Genetics is Larry Gonick's attempt at taking a vastly complex topic and doing exactly this. He goes kind of overboard at times, but that might be necessary; it's possible not everyone's biology class covered the basics of Mendel (or, more likely, not everyone was actually paying attention in biology). Because he does take so much time with the basics, there are some avenues to which he alludes where he never goes into detail (kind of the cartoon version of the hated "beyond the scope of this book" cop-out), and I wish he'd sacrificed some of the common knowledge for some of the more esoteric stuff.

Still, this makes a good intro to the world of genetics, both for kids who may be interested in the field and adults who are interested in reading up on it.