A child-friendly introduction to a scientific concept.
A primer on pushes and pulls.
As they did in Matter (2023), Schaefer and Santiago continue to explore basic scientific concepts. Their latest is an interactive introduction to force, “a push or pull that can change the motion or shape of an object.” The author explores gravity (simplistically defined as “a force that pulls objects toward Earth”), friction, inertia, and acceleration. But first, she invites readers into the physics lab, where sharp eyes will find the supplies they’ll use in their investigations: whipped cream, sandpaper, a track and marbles, beanbags, a jar of dirt, and even a notebook (a nice touch). As in previous series titles, readers are asked to physically engage with the book. Kids are told to blow on an image of sand, then to touch a button on a lab-vac to clean it up, which leads to an explanation of how a vacuum works. Outside the lab, on a playground, a diverse group of children and adults demonstrate forces at work. (In an online guide for the series, the publisher builds on this idea with a playground-based lesson.) A final, sure-to-please activity asks children to construct a teeter-totter out of a Popsicle stick and a drinking straw, which provides another example of pulls and pushes and gives readers the opportunity to propel a small object into the air. (Be prepared for enthusiastic demonstrations.) The combination of clear, concrete examples, reader interaction, and humor works well.
A child-friendly introduction to a scientific concept. (Informational picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9781623542450
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
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 arguable error of omission and definite errors of commission sink this otherwise attractive effort.
A look at the unique ways that 11 globe-spanning animal species construct their homes.
Each creature garners two double-page spreads, which Cherrix enlivens with compelling and at-times jaw-dropping facts. The trapdoor spider constructs a hidden burrow door from spider silk. Sticky threads, fanning from the entrance, vibrate “like a silent doorbell” when walked upon by unwitting insect prey. Prairie dogs expertly dig communal burrows with designated chambers for “sleeping, eating, and pooping.” The largest recorded “town” occupied “25,000 miles and housed as many as 400 million prairie dogs!” Female ants are “industrious insects” who can remove more than a ton of dirt from their colony in a year. Cathedral termites use dirt and saliva to construct solar-cooled towers 30 feet high. Sasaki’s lively pictures borrow stylistically from the animal compendiums of mid-20th-century children’s lit; endpapers and display type elegantly suggest the blues of cyanotypes and architectural blueprints. Jarringly, the lead spread cheerfully extols the prowess of the corals of the Great Barrier Reef, “the world’s largest living structure,” while ignoring its accelerating, human-abetted destruction. Calamitously, the honeybee hive is incorrectly depicted as a paper-wasps’ nest, and the text falsely states that chewed beeswax “hardens into glue to shape the hive.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An arguable error of omission and definite errors of commission sink this otherwise attractive effort. (selected sources) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-5625-9
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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