Playfulness and pedagogy intertwined.
A dog and a child joyously demonstrate gravity, friction, inertia, and other physical phenomena.
With an eye to her STEM-centric theme, Peters outfits her free-verse romps with titular references to physics and parenthetical identifications of relevant topics or principles—so that, for instance, in “Extra Electrons #2 (Electricity),” “My generous dog / gives me electrons / on cool, dry days” by rolling on a carpet until she is “excessively negative” and then bestowing a nose kiss: “Zap!” Likewise, digging claws into a carpet at bathtime and then escaping when soaped and slick demonstrate friction and its lack; zooming down a playground slide shows gravity in action; and if the poet mentions only three stages of matter in “Phase-Crazy Dog” (“My amazing dog / is like a Gas / whenever she chases flies. / She leaps! She jumps! / She’s everywhere at once!”), she does hint that there are others in the expansive set of notes on each poem at the end. In exuberantly drawn sketches, Bloch places a hyperactive canine of indeterminate breed and a dark-skinned child of ambiguous gender with a lighter-skinned Aunty Rosa as caregiver amid stars or jagged lines and other indicators of motion or energy flow. The final entry leaves physics behind for a loving “Paradox”: “My cosmic dog and I / are just / specks / in outer space,” but “we are in the center / of our universe.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Playfulness and pedagogy intertwined. (Picture-book poetry/science. 7-9)Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-63592-527-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Wordsong/Astra Books for Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
The result of this Grammy-nominated harpist’s effort to simplify a complex scientific subject is a medley of environmental...
Pollution, energy use, and simply throwing things away have created a worldwide mess that kids can help clean up with an eight-step action plan.
This well-meant offering introduces the idea of the interconnectedness of human activities and the state of our world. We’re all affected by pollution. Our need for energy results in a variety of current problems: unclean air, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and extreme weather patterns. We should use less. Trash doesn’t vanish; it must be burned or dumped. We should also recycle. This helps save trees, which “eat up pollution.” Colorful, unsophisticated cartoons show a bunny magician who cannot make trash disappear and a diverse array of young people who can. The author’s strong message is undercut by end matter that twice states that “many scientists” consider climate change to be caused by global warming. A National Academy of Sciences survey in 2010 showed an overwhelming consensus: 97 percent. Inspired by her concern for the environment, Kondonassis wrote this when she was unable to find an appropriate book that would explain to her young daughter why she should care. Too bad she missed Kim Michelle Toft’s The World That We Want (2005) or Todd Parr’s The Earth Book (2010).
The result of this Grammy-nominated harpist’s effort to simplify a complex scientific subject is a medley of environmental tweets. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61608-588-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
Young makers will find the Scrap Pack’s enthusiasm infectious, but even as broad overviews, these offer at best incomplete...
A mouse, a bird, and a junkyard frog assemble a car from the ground up—cluing in readers who may be a bit vague on what’s beneath all those hoods…or at least what used to be.
Enlisting his green buddy Hank to supply the parts and feathered Phoebe to draw up the plans, Eli, “king of crazy ideas,” sees his latest project grow from a frame and some miscellaneous loose parts to a nifty blue convertible with a classic 1950s look. At each stage, Sodomka supplies clearly drawn angled or cutaway views with dozens of major components labeled, from “steering knuckle bracket” to “tie rod” and “ball joint.” The gas tank is labeled but seems to be missing, though, and readers who want to know what a “differential” actually does or the purpose of the “indicator switch” are out of luck. Lacey’s claim that an engine “is like the brain of the car” doesn’t bear close examination, either. Moreover, the finished auto isn’t much like most modern cars, as it has no electronic elements, for instance, and is powered by a three-cylinder engine (misleadingly billed as “regular”) quaintly fed by a long-obsolescent carburetor. With an auto under their belts (and with similar oversimplification), Eli’s “Scrap Pack” goes on to an even more ambitious enterprise in How to Build a Plane. In both volumes, closer looks at selected systems or related topics follow the storyline’s happy conclusion, and each broad trial-and-error step in the construction is recapped at the end.
Young makers will find the Scrap Pack’s enthusiasm infectious, but even as broad overviews, these offer at best incomplete pictures. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63322-041-6
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Quarto
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
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