Big Questions from Little People: And Simple Answers from Great Minds

In the spirit of Schott’s Miscellany, The Magic of Reality, and The Dangerous Book for Boys comes Can a Bee Sting a Bee?—a smart, illuminating, essential, and utterly delightful handbook for perplexed parents and their curious children. Author Gemma Elwin Harris has lovingly compiled weighty questions from precocious grade school children—queries that have long dumbfounded even intelligent adults—and she’s gathered together a notable crew of scientists, specialists, philosophers, and writers to answer them.

Authors Mary Roach and Phillip Pullman, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, chef Gordon Ramsay, adventurist Bear Gryllis, and linguist Noam Chomsky are among the top experts responding to the Big Questions from Little People, (“Do animals have feelings?”, “Why can’t I tickle myself?”, “Who is God?”) with well-known comedians, columnists, and raconteurs offering hilarious alternative answers. Miles above your average general knowledge and trivia collections, this charming compendium is a book fans of the E.H. Gombrich classic, A Little History of the World, will adore.

Gemma Elwin Harris is a freelance writer and editor who has contributed to Time Out, Glamour, and the Sunday Times. A graduate of Cambridge University, she lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her young son and two very curious nieces inspired this book.