A big miss for both nature and math.
A Swedish author encourages kids to get outside and explore math.
Focusing on the four basic operations as well as sorting, counting, patterning, geometry, odd and even numbers, and time, AdBåge divides the book into four sections by season, providing five to seven activities within each that are a mix of solo and group endeavors. Using rope, kids can cooperatively make geometric shapes. Bowling with plastic bottles as pins works addition skills. Fallen twigs make for a good game of pickup-sticks. How many snowballs can be packed in a minute? While some of the activities listed emphasize both the outdoors and math, most do not. Several can be done inside just as well, and many require that children collect and paint or otherwise mark natural materials. Some directions are not complete enough to be followed easily, while others seem just to add extra steps so that the author can claim it’s an outdoor game. All of the winter suggestions require snow (in short supply in many climates), and throwing rocks at a tree target is just asking for ricochet injuries. Backmatter includes rudimentary directions for “plus and minus” and “multiply and divide” as well as a list of activities by math skill. Some of the illustrations appear strangely unfinished, a few characters lacking facial or hair color while around them are mostly pink faces, and the opening spread about numbers is missing illustrations for four of the 11 numbers.
A big miss for both nature and math. (Nonfiction. 4-10)Pub Date: April 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77138-612-8
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book.
Ada Twist’s incessant stream of questions leads to answers that help solve a neighborhood crisis.
Ada conducts experiments at home to answer questions such as, why does Mom’s coffee smell stronger than Dad’s coffee? Each answer leads to another question, another hypothesis, and another experiment, which is how she goes from collecting data on backyard birds for a citizen-science project to helping Rosie Revere figure out how to get her uncle Ned down from the sky, where his helium-filled “perilous pants” are keeping him afloat. The Questioneers—Rosie the engineer, Iggy Peck the architect, and Ada the scientist—work together, asking questions like scientists. Armed with knowledge (of molecules and air pressure, force and temperature) but more importantly, with curiosity, Ada works out a solution. Ada is a recognizable, three-dimensional girl in this delightfully silly chapter book: tirelessly curious and determined yet easily excited and still learning to express herself. If science concepts aren’t completely clear in this romp, relationships and emotions certainly are. In playful full- and half-page illustrations that break up the text, Ada is black with Afro-textured hair; Rosie and Iggy are white. A closing section on citizen science may inspire readers to get involved in science too; on the other hand, the “Ode to a Gas!” may just puzzle them. Other backmatter topics include the importance of bird study and the threat palm-oil use poses to rainforests.
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3422-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard.
A grouchy sapling on a Christmas tree farm finds that there are better things than lights and decorations for its branches.
A Grinch among the other trees on the farm is determined never to become a sappy Christmas tree—and never to leave its spot. Its determination makes it so: It grows gnarled and twisted and needle-less. As time passes, the farm is swallowed by the suburbs. The neighborhood kids dare one another to climb the scary, grumpy-looking tree, and soon, they are using its branches for their imaginative play, the tree serving as a pirate ship, a fort, a spaceship, and a dragon. But in winter, the tree stands alone and feels bereft and lonely for the first time ever, and it can’t look away from the decorated tree inside the house next to its lot. When some parents threaten to cut the “horrible” tree down, the tree thinks, “Not now that my limbs are full of happy children,” showing how far it has come. Happily for the tree, the children won’t give up so easily, and though the tree never wished to become a Christmas tree, it’s perfectly content being a “trick or tree.” Martinez’s digital illustrations play up the humorous dichotomy between the happy, aspiring Christmas trees (and their shoppers) and the grumpy tree, and the diverse humans are satisfyingly expressive.
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7335-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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