A brightly inviting and effective manual for teaching data visualization to younger readers.
An illustrated guide to teaching visual information to children.
The key fictional conceit of Khan’s nonfiction debut is a 10-year-old girl named Pariza, whose parents are teaching the basics of data visualization to her and her younger brother “one graph at a time.” Each of the book’s chapters contains a story in which little Pariza is exposed to some new data concept or mathematical process, followed by a “time out” in which more details are provided, concluding with a “your turn to play” segment in which young readers are encouraged to try out the skills they’ve just learned. In this fictionalized setting, the author contends with a variety of simple data-representation challenges, from the basics of making a graph to ways of breaking down such statistical data as the average rainfall in each of the United States or the number of vowels and consonants in the various state names. Gradually, the subjects grow more elaborate and more complicated, always couched in the activities of Pariza’s family. In one section, Pariza and her family members keep track of each person’s score during rounds of Scrabble; Pariza then converts those scores into a graph (“she started adding dots for her score and connected them to form a line graph”). Khan’s narrative choice to render all of this as a story with identifiable characters (including resourceful Pariza, her calm, understanding parents, and her headstrong younger brother) is a wise one; the approach will allow younger readers to learn the basics of data visualization without feeling intimidated or bored. The book’s uncredited illustrations, showing not only characters and their settings but also multicolored charts and graphs, further help to demystify what might otherwise be daunting concepts. By the end of the book, Pariza is confident and ready to take on the world, and Khan’s young readers may very well feel the same way.
A brightly inviting and effective manual for teaching data visualization to younger readers.Pub Date: June 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781087966205
Page Count: 126
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A good introduction to observation, data, and trying again.
Cece loves asking “why” and “what if.”
Her parents encourage her, as does her science teacher, Ms. Curie (a wink to adult readers). When Cece and her best friend, Isaac, pair up for a science project, they choose zoology, brainstorming questions they might research. They decide to investigate whether dogs eat vegetables, using Cece’s schnauzer, Einstein, and the next day they head to Cece’s lab (inside her treehouse). Wearing white lab coats, the two observe their subject and then offer him different kinds of vegetables, alone and with toppings. Cece is discouraged when Einstein won’t eat them. She complains to her parents, “Maybe I’m not a real scientist after all….Our project was boring.” Just then, Einstein sniffs Cece’s dessert, leading her to try a new way to get Einstein to eat vegetables. Cece learns that “real scientists have fun finding answers too.” Harrison’s clean, bright illustrations add expression and personality to the story. Science report inserts are reminiscent of The Magic Schoolbus books, with less detail. Biracial Cece is a brown, freckled girl with curly hair; her father is white, and her mother has brown skin and long, black hair; Isaac and Ms. Curie both have pale skin and dark hair. While the book doesn’t pack a particularly strong emotional or educational punch, this endearing protagonist earns a place on the children’s STEM shelf.
A good introduction to observation, data, and trying again. (glossary) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-249960-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
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
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