You heard it here first

Date: 17 April 2010 04:22:20

So I downloaded some free e-books from Book Depository a while ago. Including quite a number of kiddy books. Last night I was reading a Bobbsey Twins book and it hit me - the older twins, Nan and Bert are described as being tall and slender with brown hair and brown eyes, while the younger twins, Flossie and Freddie are short and fat with blonde hair and blue eyes. This eye colour discrepancy leads me to believe that either Laura Lee Hope* was not educated in the field of Mendelian inheritance** OR Mrs Bobbsey was not the clean-living model wife she is made out to be in the books. * Wikipedia informs me that Laura Lee Hope is a pseudonym and the books were actually written by a number of people! WHY WAS I NOT TOLD?! ** Wikipedia also informs me that eye colour is no longer considered to be a Mendelian trait. I WAS NOT TOLD ABOUT THIS EITHER! But Laura Lee Hope, if indeed she existed, would also not have been told about this so the original criticism stands. I will have to do further research (or at least read more than the first paragraph of an article) to see if it is possible for a couple to have children with blue eyes and children with brown eyes. It seems unlikely. A spontaneous mutation may well account for one child having blue eyes, but to have fraternal twins with blue eyes requires a rather high frequency of spontaneous mutations...