GRAVITY IS BRINGING ME DOWN

Leda learns about gravity the hard way.

This cheerful tale uses Leda’s case of the clumsies to introduce the concept of gravity. The child falls out of bed, spills her cereal, trips while getting on the bus, and tips the book cart over. Gravity must be in a bad mood, she concludes. Leda’s teacher works in a hands-on lesson on how gravity keeps planets in orbit around the sun and points out that it’s also what keeps everything in its place on Earth. Still, nothing seems to go right until a trip to a children’s museum, where she climbs and slides and simulates space flight, which brings a peaceful resolution between an active Leda and anchoring gravity. The appealingly bright, textured illustrations lift this title above other STEM-themed picture books. Leda’s bedroom is filled with space-themed objects, the school playground is enticing, and the museum’s activities seem designed for an energetic child’s after-school enjoyment. A popular middle-grade writer noted for several successful fiction series, Van Draanen proves adept at conveying STEM-related info for the picture-book crowd. Very different in approach from Jason Chin’s Gravity (2014), the two books would nevertheless make an excellent pairing. Leda and her family are Asian, while the students and museumgoers are racially diverse.

An engaging flight of imagination, grounded in fact.