Author: Sue Heavenrich

STEAM Jobs in Cybersecurity (Series: STEAM Jobs You’ll Love)
by Cynthia Argentine
48 pages; ages 9 – 13
Rourke Educational Media, 2019

Just one month ago, the computer systems in 22 small Texas towns were hacked and held for ransom. Hackers blocked access to data, effectively closing down town governments and court systems. Just a week earlier, hackers locked down computer systems for a small town library system and school system.

Like pirates, hackers held town and institutional data hostage until a ransom could be paid. Their demands: hundreds of thousands of dollars in bitcoin. Those who don’t pay don’t get their data back. Even those who do pay often don’t get all their data returned.

Cities aren’t the only victims. Hospitals, credit agencies, even individuals are increasingly facing cyber-threats. So there are plenty of opportunities for people seeking a job in cybersecurity. Author Cynthia Argentine writes about those jobs, and the importance of a STEAM education for young people hoping to go into the field.

STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. Cybersecurity involves many of these subjects, from information technology to psychology and cryptography – that’s the math and science of secret codes. Art is included because musical patterns and visual art help develop creativity and problem-solving skills.

Argentine shows how hackers can get into a computer system, and shares their “toolkit of tricks”: viruses, malware, and bots. She devotes an entire chapter to designing a defense against cyber-intrusion, another to ethics

Fast Fact boxes add information about specific cyber-attacks, how computers influence our lives, and which passwords are the worst. Hint: don’t use starwars! Throughout the book she highlights STEAM jobs in cybersecurity: cybersecurity analyst, cybersecurity consultant, malware analyst, cyber-forensic investigator, security software developer, information security administrator, cybersecurity engineer and architect, and cybersecurity lawyer.

Another cool thing about this book: it’s part of the STEAM Jobs You’ll Love series. Other books in the series focus on jobs in Agriculture, Architecture, Forensic science, Game development, Robotics, Wildlife Conservation … and the list goes on. Review copy provided by the publisher.

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

Copyright © 2019 Sue Heavenrich All Rights Reserved.

The Lost Forest
by Phyllis Root; illus. by Betsy Bowen
40 pages; ages 4 – 9
Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2019

How do you lose a forest?

Especially when trees are so tall you can’t see their tops. So big it takes two or more people holding hands to reach around. You’d think a forest of trees like that would be easy to find – but in 1882, in Minnesota, a survey crew lost an entire forest. It disappeared right off their maps! Great news for the trees – they kept right on growing. Great news for the other plants and the animals living in the forest – they kept on raising seeds and babies and continuing their community of life.

For more than 75 years the mistake stayed on the map, protecting the trees from the lumberjacks’ saws and axes. Now the forest is protected and you can go visit 350-year old pines. So it is a lost-and-found forest, right?

What I like about this book: I love the way Phyllis Root tells her story, with a sly wink to the reader. “If you were trying to turn this rollicking land into straight lines on paper, you might make a mistake,” she writes. She reminds readers that the trees had never been lost. Neither had the orchids, porcupines, and other wild plants and animals. They knew exactly where they were!

I love the illustrations by Betsy Bowen. They pull you right into the woods. I like the endpages – maps of the township – and the plentitude of back matter. There you’ll find out more about old growth forests and some of the species you might find there. You can find out more about surveying, and there’s a fun section called “how to talk like a surveyor”.

Check out “beyond the book” activities over at Archimedes Notebook

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

Copyright © 2019 Sue Heavenrich All Rights Reserved.

Rotten! Vultures, Beetles, Slime, and Nature’s Other Decomposers, by Anita Sanchez ; illus by Gilbert Ford
96 pages; ages 7-10
HMH Books for Young Readers, 2019

“It’s a rotten world,” writes Anita Sanchez. No matter where you look, from the backyard compost pile to the landfill – and even in the back of your fridge – things are decomposing. And that’s a good thing, because imagine what the world would be like if nothing broke down. Decomposed. Rotted away. What would happen to dead animals, orange peels, that pile of dog poop?

In this book we meet dung beetles –the little critters that especially love the dung of plant-eating animals. Turns out, dung beetles are major players in the battle against global warming.

We meet vulture and other scavengers that feed on the flesh of dead animals. Scavenging is a pretty good strategy because dead meals don’t fight back!

We meet the “fun guys” of the decomposer club, fungi. They excel at breaking down the tough bonds that hold molecules of wood together, Sanchez writes. They turn fallen logs into humus – crumbly dark soil perfect for growing new plants. We meet ants, termites, slugs and slime molds, and even take a field trip into our own homes to check out what’s rotten.

I love the way Sanchez makes rotten things sound like the most exciting stuff to look for! And her hands-on challenges: follow sandwich crusts and a “rot it yourself” test. And I really like the last chapter about Rotten People – and we’re not talking about scallywags, thieves, and politicians!

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

Copyright © 2019 Sue Heavenrich All Rights Reserved.

The Secret Life of the Skunk (Secret Life series)
by Laurence Pringle; illus by Kate Garchinsky
32 pages; ages 6-9
Boyds Mills Press, 2019

This book takes us inside the underground burrow of a striped skunk and her kits. The burrow is a cozy place, lined with soft leaves and grasses. It’s filled with warmth, earthy smells, and mama skunk’s musky scent. As the kits grow, they begin exploring outside the den. Eventually mama takes them on a foraging expedition, digging up beetle grubs to show them how to find food.

What I like about this book: Kate Garchinsky’s illustrations are so soft that you almost feel the furry little kits. And Laurence Pringle finds the best words to describe skunk sounds: squeak, squeal, churr, twitter. I love the narrative arc of the story told over one season of the skunks’ lives: from birth in the spring, through summer growth, and into the fall when they are preparing for winter dormancy. I also like the back matter where you can learn a lot more about skunks, check out words in the glossary, and find a short list of books about skunks.

Head over to Archimedes Notebook for some beyond-the-book activities.

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

Copyright © 2019 Sue Heavenrich All Rights Reserved.

Two recent books use pop-ups to invite young children into their habitats. They are written by Libby Walden and illustrated by Clover Robin, with paper engineering credits to Martin Tyler. Originally published in England, Kane Miller released them in US this past spring (2019).

Across the Savannah

In the early morning haze / The noble lion loves to laze.

Pop-up pages introduce readers to six different savannah animals: lion, giraffe, hippo, meerkat, and elephant.

On the Mountain

In the whispering mountain breeze / Two wolf cubs run between the trees.

In this book each pop-up page introduces the reader to an animal you might find when hiking on a mountain: wolf, trout, bighorn sheep, black bear, and bald eagle.

What I like about these books: Simple, rhyming text describes where each animal lives – beneath the rippling surface of a mountain lake, a muddy watering hole, in deep burrows, or on a jagged rocky slope.

Sidebars contain fun facts and additional information about each animal and the habitat. And the pop-ups provide an abundance of details that will have kids searching for more.

Beyond the Books:
Try your hand at making a pop-up book about animals in your back yard.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

Copyright © 2019 Sue Heavenrich All Rights Reserved.

Wait, Rest, Pause: Dormancy in Nature
by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
32 pages; ages 4-8
Millbrook Press, 2020 (released fall 2019)

 

 

 

If you were dormant, you would pause—
   waiting,
        resting,
             huddling,
                 curling,
                      napping.

When conditions get tough, some animals head elsewhere. But others – they tough it out by going into a dormant stage: estivation, hibernation, diapause, torpor. Plants go dormant as well. You’ve watched deciduous trees lose their leaves when days grow shorter and colder. The trees hunker down for the winter, waiting for the right condition to break dormancy and produce flowers and leaves.

What I like love about this book: I love the lyrical language that Marcie Atkins uses to show plants and animals going dormant – and then reawakening. The pages are filled with verbs that kids can act out. They are filled with engaging photos of buds and bugs, worms and wildlife. And there is awesome back matter: descriptions of different kinds of dormancy, suggestions for further reading, and websites to explore. If I gave stars, I’d give ‘em all to this book!

Check out “beyond the book” activities over at Archimedes Notebook. Review copy provided by the publisher.

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

Copyright © 2019 Sue Heavenrich All Rights Reserved.

My Happy Year by E.Bluebird (A Nature Diary)
by Paul Meisel
40 pages; ages 4 – 8
Holiday House, 2019

Today is my birthday! I can’t see yet. When I stick my head up and open my beak, Mom and Dad feed me.

E. Bluebird has a good life: loving parents who feed her beetles and crickets, a cozy nest, and fancy new feathers on her wings. Even when her parents want E to leave the nest (she’s afraid of heights…) they still feed her. But when E. does take that leap out of the nest, she discovers flight.

What I like about this book: It’s fun to read. Plus, who knew that bluebirds keep journals? For example:
July 4 ~ Flight is amazing! … Everything is so beautiful from up here. (Apparently she didn’t notice the owl watching her.) Plus we get to tag along on her migration flight there and back and watch her get on with bluebird life.

I also like the creative use of end pages. That’s where Paul Meisel puts the sort of things that one might usually find in back matter: a range map; information about bluebirds in the wild; links for how to build a bluebird house; lyrics to their songs; and a short glossary.

A couple years ago Meisel wrote another book from the point of view of a praying mantis. you can find my review of My Awesome Summer, by P. Mantis here.

Head over to Archimedes Notebook for some Beyond the Book activities.

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

Copyright © 2019 Sue Heavenrich All Rights Reserved.

About Habitats: Rivers and Streams
By Cathryn Sill; illus by John Sill
48 pages; ages 2-6
Peachtree publishers, 2019

Rivers and streams are places where fresh water flows across the land

From babbling brooks and mountain springs to the mighty Amazon river, this book offers a glimpse into river habitats. We see how rivers form, how they shape the land – and are shaped by it, and the diversity of wildlife and plants that live along and in these waterways. Author Cathryn Sills also emphasizes the importance of conservation, because people depend on healthy rivers too.

What I like about this book: Informative text is paired with engaging illustrations. While some are scenic, others are filled with details that will have kids spending time on the page. For example, one page introduces the concept that rivers provide food and shelter to animals – and the caption lists some animals for the reader to find in the illustration.

There is back matter! As with other books in the About Habitats series, this one has six pages of more detailed information about each river illustration. There is also a glossary and a list of books and websites for further discovery. And there is Front Matter: a labeled diagram showing parts of a river basin, with simple definitions.

Head over to Archimedes Notebook for Beyond the Book activities and another book about river rescues.

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

Copyright © 2019 Sue Heavenrich All Rights Reserved.

The Apollo Missions for Kids: The People and Engineering Behind the Race to the Moon, with 21 Activities
By Jerome Pohlen
160 pages; ages 9 and up
Chicago Review Press,  2019

This was the summer of SPACE – celebrating the historic spaceflight that landed the first two people on the moon (July 20, 1969). Getting people to the moon took money and man-power. It took teamwork! More than 400,000 people worked on the Apollo project, in factories and offices spread over 46 states, writes Jerome Pohlen.

Mostly, it took vision – the vision of President John F. Kennedy who, in 1961 declared the goal of landing a man on the moon within the span of a decade. At the time, the US space program was in its infancy; just 20 days earlier the first astronaut had been launched – a 15-minute flight up and back without even time to orbit the earth. Landing a human on the moon would be a challenge.

This book takes us into Mission Control and into space with the Gemini and Apollo projects. We get a close-up view of astronaut training, engineering problems, and the test of human endurance that early missions demanded. There were tragedies – the Apollo One crew was killed in a fire on the Launchpad during a test – and triumphs as the scientists, engineers, and astronauts worked toward their goal of safely landing on the moon and returning to Earth.

What I like about this book: The writing is engaging, like reading a story well told, and supported by plenty of sidebars. The book opens with a timeline that begins with 1926 – when Robert Goddard launched his first liquid-fueled rocket – to 1979 when Skylab fell to Earth. Sidebars provide additional details about the Saturn V rocket, how capsules “surf” through the atmosphere, moonsuit details, as well as offer short bios of software engineer Margaret Hamilton and “computer” Katherine Johnson (who calculated flight trajectories).

Twenty-one activities range from designing your own mission patch to figuring out your moon-weight, orbital mechanics, making “space food”, and more.

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

Copyright © 2019 Sue Heavenrich All Rights Reserved.

June is Orca Awareness Month and, at the end of May, Orca scientists celebrated the birth of a new calf to the J-pod off the coast of British Columbia, Canada. So the perfect time to share this book (that had found a great hibernation space at the bottom of my book basket!).

The Orca Scientists (Scientists in the Field Series)
by Kim Perez Valice; photos by Andy Comins
80 pages; ages 10 – 12
HMH Books for Young Readers, 2018

In the early 1970’s Dr. Mike Bigg, a marine mammal scientist, pioneered a method of photo identification for orcas. He found that the dorsal fin “saddle patch” for each whale was unique, like fingerprint in humans. And that allowed him to follow individual whales and their pods.

Today, Ken Balcomb and other whale researchers use those techniques as they continue the research on resident and transient orcas off the coast of Washington state and southern Canada. Ken is the founder and principal investigator for the Center for Whale Research at Friday Harbor. From May through October, he and other scientists keep track of who’s swimming with whom.

Despite their name of “killer whales”, over his 40 years of observing Ken’s never seen any of his whales kill anything other than the fish they eat. And they eat a lot – about 5% of their body weight in fish each day. Unfortunately, a decreasing fish population creates problems for the whales. They have to travel greater distances to find food, and that means less time for socializing, playing, and resting.

What I like about this book: Reading this book is the next best thing to being in a boat with the whale scientists. We really get to know some of the personalities and lifestyles of the orcas.  We get side ring seats to a mother whale teaching her calf how to hunt. Hint: it’s similar to how mother cats teach their kittens.

We learn about other environmental issues that put orcas (and whales in general) at risk – such as the pollution. And we get a close-up view of scientists taking blubber samples to determine levels of PCBs and DDY. Unfortunately, even banned chemicals remain in the environment for a long time.

There are great sidebars that help explain things like why orcas are black and white, and the Samish naming ceremony for the whales.
There’s a great chapter about Tucker, the detection dog who works with the whale scientists. Tucker’s job: to locate whale scat.

There are a lot of unanswered questions, but it’s not too late to make a difference. Check out the Orca Network and Whale Research Center for more information.

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

Copyright © 2019 Sue Heavenrich All Rights Reserved.