Gemma Elwin Harris - Why Cant I Tickle Myself?: Big Questions From Little People...Answered By Some Very Big People

My son is two years old and already the questions have started. Recently he pointed at the moon as we hurried home from nursery and asked, What dat? For now, Thats the moon will do as answer, but I know it wont be long before Im struggling to explain what the moon is made of, how far away it is, and whether a goldfish could survive there.

The questions children ask are often baffling. Chances are, if you ever knew the answer or even part of the answer youve probably forgotten it or can only remember a half-baked version of the truth. Imagine if you could turn to a well-known expert at this point and get them to answer for you, in language simple enough for a child to understand. This was the idea behind BIG QUESTIONS.

With the help of ten primary schools, we asked thousands of kids between the ages of four and twelve to send us the questions they most wanted answered. The results were fascinating and funny. There were cute and quirky questions, like Why is space so sparkly?, Who had the first pet? and Can a bee sting a bee? Others were fiendishly difficult: How is electricity made? or Where do oceans come from? And a few shot straight to the heart of a deep philosophical conundrum: Why do we have wars?, How do we fall in love? and Where does good come from?

Among their hand-written replies we found a lot of questions involving bodily functions. Why is wee yellow? seemed to be a recurring concern. The mysteries of space clearly obsessed many children, and its no surprise that animals chickens, cows and monkeys popped up frequently. There was even one question, of great genius, that encapsulated all the above a perfect storm of cows, bowels and space travel: If a cow didnt fart for a year and then did one big fart would it fly into space?

What would world experts say, when faced with these questions? The response from our panel has been staggering and heart-warming. However busy, theyve carved out time to co-write this book in order to benefit the NSPCC the UKs leading child protection charity.

Bear Grylls took the trouble to explain the nutritious benefits of eating a worm. Jessica Ennis emailed a mantra for aspiring Olympians, just two months before the 2012 Games. Derren Brown set his impressive grey matter to work on Is the human brain the most powerful thing on earth? While Philippa Gregory put her latest novel on hold to shed light on why Guy Fawkes was so naughty. No question was too bizarre. The historian Bettany Hughes barely blinked when we asked her Did Alexander the Great like frogs?

This book doesnt claim to offer the only answers to these questions. Its an anthology of voices, a personal response from each expert to a childs idiosyncratic question. We hope you enjoy reading them with your family and take something from them including the mental image of a cow soaring into the stratosphere powered by its own methane. (Thanks to the science writer Mary Roach and her friend Ray, a real life rocket scientist, for running the maths on that one.)

When my son asked his question about the moon that evening, I was busy making a mental list of what we had in the fridge for dinner. Lying back in his buggy, he was taking in the beauty of the night sky. There above, he saw a pale and ghostly globe shining in the darkness for the very first time. His question What dat? demanded I see that full moon too. So we stopped and stared, and how strange and new it seemed to us both.

Gemma Elwin Harr