March 2021 – Nonfiction Monday

March 29, 2021March 28, 2021

June Almeida, Virus Detective!

June Almeida, Virus Detective!: The Woman Who Discovered the First Human Coronavirus
by Suzanne Slade (Author) and Elisa Paganelli (Illustrator)
@ Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound

Booktalk: June Almeida loved learning about science and nature. An excellent student, she was especially interested in biology and won the top science prize at her school. Creative and observant, June noticed details that others often missed. She dreamed of attending university but economic hardships caused her to leave school at age 16. Still, June was determined to pursue her passion for science. She was hired by a local hospital to work in its lab, using a microscope to magnify and examine cells. Her work helped doctors treat patients. June later worked in labs in London and in Toronto. Her skill in using the electron microscope to examine cells and help identify viruses earned her promotion and respect in the science community. When June was 34 years old, she discovered the first human coronavirus. Her groundbreaking work continues to help researchers today in the fight against illnesses caused by viruses, including COVID-19.

Snippet: June dreamed of studying science at a university. But college was expensive. Her father was a bus driver, which didn’t pay much. Her mother’s job at a local shop didn’t either. With no savings for college, she left school at age 16 to help pay the family bills.

June wanted to find a meaningful job.

Fascinated by biology, she hoped to learn more about it. She longed to help people with illnesses like her brother.

Nonfiction Monday

It’s Nonfiction Monday!

March 29, 2021March 28, 2021

Spi-ku: A Clutter of Short Verse on Eight Legs

Right in time for National Poetry Month (April), at Growing With Science we have Spi-ku: A Clutter of Short Verse on Eight Legs by Leslie Bulion and illustrated by Robert Meganck.

Author Leslie Bulion has a subtly playful approach to spiders.

All spiders are arachnids
But some arachnids
mite not be spiders.

If you like that kind of word play, you are in for a real treat.

Illustrator Robert Meganck also has a subtle sense of humor. For example, in the front endpapers he shows a fly near a spider web. The back endpapers shows the same spider with a small webbed up package. He leaves it up to the reader to figure out what happened to the fly.

Intermingled between poems of different forms — in spite of the title, not all are haiku — is detailed information about spiders, from what they eat to how they build webs. If the text isn’t enough, there’s extensive back matter as well.

Spi-ku is perfect for budding arachnologists and poets alike. Readers are likely to find something new every time they read the book. Investigate a copy today!

And crawl over to Growing with Science blog for more information and activity suggestions.

March 22, 2021March 21, 2021

Try It!: How Frieda Caplan Changed the Way We Eat

Try It!: How Frieda Caplan Changed the Way We Eat
by Mara Rockliff (Author) and Giselle Potter (Illustrator)
@ Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound

Booktalk: In 1956, Frieda Caplan started working at the Seventh Street Produce Market in Los Angeles. Instead of competing with the men in the business with their apples, potatoes, and tomatoes, Frieda thought, why not try something new? Staring with mushrooms, Frieda began introducing fresh and unusual foods to her customers–snap peas, seedless watermelon, mangos, and more!

Snippet:

Nonfiction Monday

It’s Nonfiction Monday!

March 15, 2021March 14, 2021

Headstrong Hallie!: The Story of Hallie Morse Daggett, the First Female “Fire Guard”

Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound

Headstrong Hallie!: The Story of Hallie Morse Daggett, the First Female “Fire Guard”
by Aimee Bissonette (Author) and David Hohn (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Hallie Morse Daggett loved spending time outdoors, hiking among the tall trees of the forests in California’s Siskiyou Mountains. She wasn’t afraid of the bears, coyotes, and wildcats. But Hallie was afraid of fire and understood the threat it posed to the forests, wildlife, and people. And more than anything, she wanted to devote her life to protecting her beloved outdoors; she decided she would work for the US Forest Service. But in the 1880s the Forest Service didn’t hire women, thinking they couldn’t handle the physical challenges of the work or the isolation. But the Forest Service didn’t know Hallie or how determined she could be.

Snippet: As soon as she finished school, Hallie began mailing letters to the US Forest Service. She wanted to work. She wanted to help fight fires.

But the Forest Service said no.

Nonfiction Monday

It’s Nonfiction Monday!

March 8, 2021March 7, 2021

Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer

Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound

Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer
by Traci Sorell (Author) and Natasha Donovan (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Mary Golda Ross designed classified airplanes and spacecraft as Lockheed Aircraft Corporation’s first female engineer. Find out how her passion for math and the Cherokee values she was raised with shaped her life and work.

Snippet:

Nonfiction Monday

It’s Nonfiction Monday!

March 1, 2021February 28, 2021

Jump at the Sun

Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound

Jump at the Sun: The True Life Tale of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston
by Alicia D. Williams (Author) and Jacqueline Alcántara (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Zora was a girl who hankered for tales like bees for honey. Now, her mama always told her that if she wanted something, “to jump at de sun”, because even though you might not land quite that high, at least you’d get off the ground. So Zora jumped from place to place, from the porch of the general store where she listened to folktales, to Howard University, to Harlem. And everywhere she jumped, she shined sunlight on the tales most people hadn’t been bothered to listen to until Zora. The tales no one had written down until Zora. Tales on a whole culture of literature overlooked . . . until Zora. Until Zora jumped.

Snippet:

Nonfiction Monday

It’s Nonfiction Monday!

March 1, 2021February 28, 2021

The Stuff Between the Stars: How Vera Rubin Discovered Most of the Universe

Today at Growing with Science blog we are celebrating the new picture book biography, The Stuff Between the Stars: How Vera Rubin Discovered Most of the Universe by Sandra Nickel and illustrated by Aimée Sicuro .

Vera Rubin was an astronomer who discovered some cool and important “stuff”.

From a young age, she was captivated by stargazing.

As she got older, she began to investigate swirling clusters of stars, gases, and dust known as galaxies. She studied where galaxies were found in space and how they moved relative to each other. When the stars within galaxies move at different speeds as she thought they should, she demonstrated there was something in between the stars that we can’t see or detect, something pulling the stars. That “something” had been previously named dark matter and there is a lot of it!

Discussion:

In addition to revealing groundbreaking science, author Sandra Nickel also celebrates Vera Rubin’s passion for her work and how she kept going in spite of numerous obstacles, including others not understanding her work.

Aimée Sicuro’s illustrations are out of this world. They vacillate between concrete and abstract, capturing how grounded Vera was and yet her thoughts were in the galaxies. You can see what I mean in the page spread below.

The Stuff Between the Stars is sure to thrill budding astronomers. It would also be perfect to accompany a trip to a planetarium, as well as for Women’s History Month discussions. Gaze into a copy today!

Stop by Growing With Science for more information and activity suggestions.