TURN IT LOOSE

In this relentlessly enthusiastic esteem-builder, Swanson argues that everyone gets a “cool kit of science skills,” useful in any walk of life. These skills include the ability to ask questions, collect, and classify, to spot patterns and inconsistencies, to learn from mistakes, to observe, and to wonder—and to back up her claim, she drops dozens of names in anecdotal examples, from “Charley” Darwin and “Tom” Edison to Wayne Gretzky, Amelia Earhart, Louis Armstrong, and Dr. Seuss. In each topical chapter she also throws out general ideas for low-tech projects or games dubbed “Brainplay” exercises. Illustrated throughout with look-alike cartoon figures, and nearly devoid of systematic biographical data, this, like Judith St. George’s So You Want to Be an Inventor? (2002), is better suited to motivational reading than educational inquiry. (bibliography) (Nonfiction. 10-15)