Science
Incredible Comparisons
This picture book designed for "big kids" gives side-by-side comparisons according to length, height, area, life-span, speed, etc. of all kinds of things - animals, mountains, countries, modes of transportation, man-made structures and much more.
Segments of the book include: "On the Surface" (compares land-size of various countries, islands, different uses of land), "Into the Earth" (canyon depths, cave lengths and depths, etc.), "Going into Space" (compares power and speeds of rockets vs. airplanes, comet tail size comparison with various planets, etc.), "The Solar System" (compares planet sizes and distances, etc.), "Great Lengths" (compares lenghts of airplanes, highways, major rivers, telecommunications cables, etc.). Other chapters cover animal speeds, ladn and water speeds, human population etc. Does include some environmental and politically correct content. The segment on human population was much better than I expected. To give a sampling.... "A population explosion has seen the number of people in the world more than triple since 1900 - from less than 2,000,000,000 to close to 6,000,000,000. Each day, enough people to fill the largest stadium in the modern world are added to the total. Thankfully, the world is a very big place. All the people in the world today could actually fit, standing shoulder to shoulder, on the small Indonesian island of Bali."
Insects
We have been spending hours in the garden where insects abound, and this new friendly title comes to entertain and inform my summer readers. The photos are very interesting and our 10 yr. old enjoyed reading about the reasons behind the dimensions of each of the unusually sized insects. The amount of information is juicy enough but also little enough to make this light and breezy summer reading!
Have fun learning about these insects: the most numerous animals on earth!
Insects do the Strangest Things
Interesting and informative stories of the strange but fascinating behavior of various types of insects. The pictures are of the somewhat cheezy 60s variety, but the text is quite good and written at approximately a second grade level.
Journey into Amazing Caves
Life is a Blessing
Originally published in French by Criterion, Paris, 1997.
Lightning
Seymour Simon, famous for his children's science books illustrated with stunning photography, hits another home run with Lightning. This fascinating book details facts and fascinating statistics about lightning with lots of the "wow!" effect that helps keep middle-schoolers interested in science. Did you know that scientists have discovered new types of lightning within the past ten years? How long would the electricity from one bolt of lightning power one lightbulb? These and many more fascinating photos and facts await the reader of this very nice science book. I really like to have these kinds of books around my house to help my children get a lot more out of science than I did as a child.
My First Body Book
This is a fun and very kid-friendly introduction to the body and its various functions and capabilities. It begins with a set of transparent overlays which portray the skeleton (skeletal system), the heart, lungs and blood (cardiovascular system), and the brain and nerves and digestive system. When I first got this book (back in the days when I was a DK representative for a short time) I worried that this book wouldn't hold up very well. After more than three years of use by little hands, I have to admit it's done quite well.
The rest of the book provides simple text, funny illustrations and the trademark DK photos covering the following topics: faces, skin and hair, muscles and bones, blood and heart, lungs and breathing, digestion, brain and nerves, eyes and seeing, ears and hearing, taste and smell, touch, growing up and "all about you."
The digestion is handled quite politely (no graphic pictures) and I was pleasantly surprised at how well the "growing up" section was handled. It begins with a very sweet and simple explanation of conception "A baby starts when a tiny sperm from the father joins with an egg inside the mother. The egg attaches itself to a part of the mother called the womb..." (pg. 29) and goes on to descriptions of the various stages of development of an unborn baby. Although the term fetus is mentioned, the baby is called a baby throughout the text!!! Again – no yucky pictures but not twaddly or dumbed-down either.
My Five Senses
Aliki, in her classic - simple and charming - style, explains each of the five senses for preschoolers. Text and pictures explain what each of the senses is used for - "When I drink my milk and eat my food, I use my sense of taste. I am tasting." My children ask for this book over and over.
Copyrights 1962/1989. Many later printings / editions.
My Hands
This is a nicely illustrated book for very young children on everything having to do with hands. The very simple text covers the names of the fingers (index, middle, etc.), the sense of touch, right or left-handed, the importance of thumbs and how different hands can be ("Daddy's hands are different from mine. They are big and rough and bony. Mother's hands are soft...") This is a charming little book for helping children appreciate how wonderfully they are made.
Copyrights 1962/1990