The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly is an intriguing book about a twelve-year old girl and her interest in science. The setting is in 1899 in Fentress, Texas. In my opinion, this is what make the book so good as the time period prohibited the main character, Calpurnia Tate, to go after her dream of becoming a Scientist. I liked seeing her obstacles she had to go through. The book starts where Calpurnia is learning in class bits and pieces about evolution. She becomes interested on the subject and starts looking for books that teach more on it. She looks for the particular book The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. This is a hard book for her to get because in 1899 no one believed in evolution. Everyone believed that God created man as we are now. Calpurnia knew her Grandaddy was into science but could not get up the nerve to ask him for a copy of the book as they had never spoken before. When she finally gets the nerve to talk to him about a science project she is conducting, he realizes how interested she …show more content…
I got a little confused when the book used a lot of scientific terms. I had to look those up. The authors purpose was confusing while reading this book. I was not sure if it was to inform people about science or entertain people or a cross of both. The genre is historical fiction. There are a lot of inventions said to have happened during this time period. It seems that the author was historically correct with them all. The story was not engaging. I did not find myself to keep wanting to read this book. The author though did have some good humor at some parts. The author failed with the plot. I felt like it was all over the place. It was little stories in one big story of Calpurnia’s life. This is what I would have changed. I would put more of a storyline in it and I would have made it a more interesting