The Snail with the Right Heart: A True Story - Hardcover

by Maria Popova (Author), Ping Zhu (Illustrator)

Based on a real scientific event and inspired by a beloved real human in the author's life, this is a story about science and the poetry of existence...

★ A Kirkus Best Book of 2021: A Best Informational Picture Book
★ A Spirituality & Practice Best Spiritual Book of 2021

The Snail with the Right Heart is a story about time and chance, genetics and gender, love and death, evolution and infinity--concepts often too abstract for the human mind to fathom, often more accessible to the young imagination; concepts made fathomable in the concrete, finite life of one tiny, unusual creature dwelling in a pile of compost amid an English garden. Emerging from this singular life is a lyrical universal invitation not to mistake difference for defect and to welcome, across the accordion scales of time and space, diversity as the wellspring of the universe's beauty and resilience.

This boldly illustrated book about evolution for children features a large gatefold that opens up to immerse readers in the story and will help kids understand that nature is all about differentiation and that being different is beautiful.

Author Biography

Maria Popova is a reader and a writer, and writes about what she reads on
Brain Pickings (brainpickings.org), which is included in the Library of
Congress permanent web archive of culturally valuable materials. She is the
author of Figuring, co-editor of
A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader, and the creator and host
of The Universe in Verse--an annual charitable celebration of science through
poetry at the interdisciplinary cultural center Pioneer Works in Brooklyn.

Ping Zhu's illustrations are frequently seen in the New York Times and
other reputable publications, but also some questionable ones. She is a
graduate of ArtCenter and gave tours there as a work-study job. In 2013, she
won the ADC Young Guns award for being simultaneously young and talented.
Though she is no longer eligible for "30 Under 30" accolades, her goal in life
is to create work that will ideally age well like a fine wine. Or even an okay
wine. Ping's children's book debut,
The Strange Birds of Flannery O'Connor, A Life, published in June 2020
and was selected by the New York Times as a Best Children's Book of
2020.