A breeze through a subject often covered in the primary grades. Pair with Vicki Cobb and Julia Gorton’s I Face the Wind...
A multifaceted invitation to young readers to explore, create, and investigate the phenomenon of wind.
As part of a new series with an interdisciplinary approach to learning about our world, this combines reading with doing, offering facts and explanations, an Abenaki legend and Greek ideas about the wind, and two cheerful, original poems. Thomas explains that warm air rises, introduces the Beaufort scale, and discusses storms, wind chill, wind-dispersed seeds, and wind energy. She invites readers to investigate and create with crafty projects and poems of their own. Projects use familiar materials such as plastic bottles and straws and have clear directions. Templates are provided but some adult help is advised. The explanations are simple, sometimes too much so. Wind doesn’t really “push” sailboats, though it would push the wind-powered vehicle that is one of the projects. Many of the botanical examples will be unfamiliar to American readers. Each spread covers a single topic or project. Information and step-by-step directions are supplied in colorful text boxes, and plentiful flat graphics include children with various hair and skin colors (and almost universally red noses) as well as two world maps as background for facts about wind around the world. A companion volume, What on Earth? Water, follows a similar format.
A breeze through a subject often covered in the primary grades. Pair with Vicki Cobb and Julia Gorton’s I Face the Wind (2003). (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68297-018-8
Page Count: 64
Publisher: QEB Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An in-depth and visually pleasing look at one of the most fundamental forces in the universe.
An introduction to gravity.
The book opens with the most iconic demonstration of gravity, an apple falling. Throughout, Herz tackles both huge concepts—how gravity compresses atoms to form stars and how black holes pull all kinds of matter toward them—and more concrete ones: how gravity allows you to jump up and then come back down to the ground. Gravity narrates in spare yet lyrical verse, explaining how it creates planets and compresses atoms and comparing itself to a hug. “My embrace is tight enough that you don’t float like a balloon, but loose enough that you can run and leap and play.” Gravity personifies itself at times: “I am stubborn—the bigger things are, the harder I pull.” Beautiful illustrations depict swirling planets and black holes alongside racially diverse children playing, running, and jumping, all thanks to gravity. Thorough backmatter discusses how Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity and explains Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. While at times Herz’s explanations may be a bit too technical for some readers, burgeoning scientists will be drawn in.
An in-depth and visually pleasing look at one of the most fundamental forces in the universe. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668936849
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tilbury House
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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