This is a fun and easy-to-follow children’s guide to STEM with a precocious but likable central character.
The Salzmans’ debut picture book introduces kids—whether home-schooled or taught in the classroom—to the wonders of a STEM education.
The central character here, 8-year-old Nina, takes the reader through her daily regimen of home-school adventures. Each day, she participates in a new activity—studying nature on Monday or listening to classical music and painting on Thursday. Along with each new activity, interesting facts are dispensed alongside suggestions for reader participation. For example, Newton’s third law of motion encourages readers to throw a pillow up in the air to observe the effects of gravity, or one can burrow like a firefly under blankets to learn about hibernation. Whether she’s meeting up with fellow home-school classmates or taking a field trip to an amusement park, Nina’s excitement about learning is undeniably contagious. The bright, colorful illustrations (by 15-year-old West) help kids visualize often difficult concepts like states of matter and different forms of energy like potential and kinetic, while the text’s rhyme scheme (“On weekends, Nina camps in bed. No school today, a fort instead”) keeps the action moving. Also, the fonts of certain words are often cleverly designed to complement the word’s meaning (for example, the word erupts appears to have lava spurting out of it). As the authors suggest, this book should initially be read from beginning to end quickly in order to appreciate the rhythmic flow of the words. There are even experiments that demonstrate things like heat flow and light observation and a model weekly STEM plan so readers can set goals just like Nina.
This is a fun and easy-to-follow children’s guide to STEM with a precocious but likable central character.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2022
ISBN: 9798985828511
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Colby Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Erupt into applause for this picture book of the first magma-tude.
A deceptively simple, visually appealing, comprehensive explanation of volcanoes.
Gibbons packs an impressive number of facts into this browsable nonfiction picture book. The text begins with the awe of a volcanic eruption: “The ground begins to rumble…ash, hot lava and rock, and gases shoot up into the air.” Diagrams of the Earth’s structural layers—inner and outer core, mantle, and crust—undergird a discussion about why volcanoes occur. Simple maps of the Earth’s seven major tectonic plates show where volcanoes are likeliest to develop. Other spreads with bright, clearly labeled illustrations cover intriguing subtopics: four types of volcanoes and how they erupt; underwater volcanoes; well-known volcanoes and historic volcanic eruptions around the world; how to be safe in the vicinity of a volcano; and the work of scientists studying volcanoes and helping to predict eruptions. A page of eight facts about volcanoes wraps things up. The straightforward, concise prose will be easy for young readers to follow. As always, Gibbons manages to present a great deal of information in a compact form.
Erupt into applause for this picture book of the first magma-tude. (Nonfiction picture book. 4-9)Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4569-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
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