这个故事以作者生活中的一个深受喜爱的真实人物为灵感，并根据一件真实发生科学事件改编。这是一个关于科学和诗意般地生存、时间和机会、遗传学和性别、爱情和死亡、进化和无限的故事。这些概念对于人类的大脑来说往往过于抽象，但对于小朋友们来说，往往更容易理解；在英国的一座花园中，一个不同寻常的微小生物住在一堆肥料中，它的具体而有限的生命让这些概念变得通俗易懂。

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; 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.