"We have got to stand up for evolution. Lots of kids don't know about it, although there are quite a few who do, and when I do readings in schools a kid will always say, 'Are you telling me we all came from fish?' And it gets a great discussion going," he said.  Richard Dawkins, the atheist academic, has called on the Coalition to make evolutionary theory a compulsory part of the curriculum. In June, he and 25 other signatories, including three Nobel laureates, wrote to Education Secretary Michael Gove saying they were "deeply concerned that evolution and science form a core part of any revised primary curriculum".  Mr Wormell, 55, did not set out to write about evolution. He wanted to illustrate a book about fish "because they were one of my obsessions as a kid, when I collected fish in tanks. I had the idea of this very smart fish, and then I had the evolution idea - that the one thing this fish wants to do more than anything is walk on the land".  The book took three months to illustrate. "It took me a while because there are so many damn fish!" he said. "I was quite relieved when we got to the bit where the fish made it to dry land."  One Smart Fish won the Best Picture Book award. I Love My Mummy by Giles Andreae, creator of the Purple Ronnie series, won Best Book for Babies, while the Best Emerging Illustrator award went to Levi Pinfold for The Django.  Wendy Cooling, chair of the judges, said: "The winning books are all special. They invite children to laugh, share, think and wonder. They represent the diversity to be found in children's books."
A book that teaches the theory of evolution to under-fives has won a   children's literary award.