Instructive and not overwhelming—just right! (Board book. 1-4)
A useful book in the “science for babies” genre that, for once, isn’t way over baby’s head…or shoulders, knees, and toes, either.
Some science board books for toddlers are so relentlessly ambitious they seem aimed at caregivers hellbent on producing the next baby Einstein rather than at kids, but anatomy is a subject in which most any child takes a natural interest. New arrivals to the world typically begin their explorations by investigating their own bodies first. Fittingly, the first body parts named herein are the aforementioned head, shoulders, knees, and toes of the classic children’s song. As an adorably rendered, racially diverse cast of toddlers models each body part under discussion, simple, clear, and enthusiastic statements guide children from the outer extremities to the mysteries within. “Your body is amazing! Think of all the things it can do… // You have a lot of bones!”—as a lab-coated professional X-rays the chest of a child, revealing the ribcage—“They support and protect your body.” The book introduces the brain, muscles (they “help your body move”), and skin (it “keeps your insides in”). The lungs and cardiovascular system are described in easily grasped terms, as is the alimentary canal, the concept of taking energy from food, and eliminating waste (potty-trainees, take note). A description of the senses and sense organs follows.
Instructive and not overwhelming—just right! (Board book. 1-4)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-64877-2
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
Satisfying, engaging, and sure to entertain the toddlers at whom it is aimed.
Nine basic shapes in vivid shifting colors are stacked on pages in various permutations.
This visually striking and carefully assembled collection of shapes, which seems to have been inspired by an Eric Carle aesthetic, invites young children to put their observation, categorization, problem-solving, color, and spatial-relation skills to work, pondering shapes and compositions—and even learning about prepositions in the process. As the text says, “a stack of shapes can make you think and wonder what you see.” First, readers see a circle under a strawberry (the red diamond with a leafy, green top and yellow-triangle seeds) and then that berry over a green square. The orange oval made to look like a fish is added to a stack of three shapes to become “yellow over diamond under guppy over green.” And so on. The metamorphosis of many of these simple shapes into animals (a yellow circle becomes a lion; a green square, a frog; a pink heart, a pig; a yellow diamond, a chicken) will surprise and delight children. Questions are directed at readers: Is a square with two round eyes and semicircle feet a “frog or square or green?” Why, all of the above! The text possesses a pleasing rhythm and subtle rhymes, positively begging to be read aloud: “circle next to berry / square by bear by sweet // blue up high / pig down low / yellow in between.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Satisfying, engaging, and sure to entertain the toddlers at whom it is aimed. (Picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-79720-508-3
Page Count: 52
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
Good intentions gone wrong.
A baby and a dog discover gravity in this appealingly illustrated, developmentally inappropriate book.
This and Baby Loves Coding are the latest offerings in the Baby Loves Science series of board books. These cute but overzealous attempts to create STEM students from children fresh from the womb seem aimed more at pushy parents than at doctoral candidates in diapers. Previous volumes have featured toddlers who love quarks, aerospace engineering, thermodynamics, and quantum physics. The contents of this book have been vetted for scientific accuracy; one wonders whether the creative team also vetted the practical value of teaching preschoolers to parrot answers to questions they’re ill-equipped to pose or indeed comprehend: “Why does a noodle fall? / Because of gravity!” Babies will have observed the central action this book presents—the fall to the floor of some tidbit from their highchair trays—over and over, but does “When Baby drops something, the earth pulls it down” adequately describe the phenomenon? For a toddler audience, even simple explanations of the science in this book require more exposition than board books allow and raise more questions than they answer. “Everything is made of matter. The amount of matter is called mass.” OK, what is matter? And if gravity makes spaghetti fall to Earth, why does it make the moon go around it? The baby has brown skin and tightly curled black hair.
Good intentions gone wrong. (Board book. 1-4)Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-58089-836-2
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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