Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
Game Boy Modding: A Beginner’s Guide to Game Boy Mods, Collecting, History, and More!
by Greg Farrell (Author)
Booktalk: Learn how to purchase, refurbish, mod, and customize Nintendo handheld consoles. The consoles are widely available and the customizations are affordable, requiring only limited tools and know-how.
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It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
Copyright © 2020 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
Today at Growing with Science blog we delve into a new middle grade book, Living Fossils: Survivors from Earth’s Distant Past by Rebecca E. Hirsch.
In Living Fossils, Rebecca Hirsch has scoured the earth for animals that not only look like their fossil ancestors, but also are the last few species of their kind. She has put together a fascinating collection of six amazing animals.
I knew that Living Fossils would be one of my new favorite books when I flipped the pages to the introduction and spotted a velvet worm. Every entomologist knows about velvet worms (Phylum Onychophora) because they have characteristics of both arthropods (the phylum containing insects) and annelids (earthworms, etc.). However, you don’t often see these unusual critters mentioned in children’s books.
Other animals covered include the horseshoe crab, which up to recently has been the only source of a chemical with important value to the medical field, and the chambered nautilus (also shown on the cover). Have you ever seen one of these cool mollusks at an aquarium?
Chapter 6 discusses another of my most-liked creatures, the platypus. It took forever for scientists to figure out where to categorize these animals that look like a bird/mammal mash up. Hirsch writes about how the decision was made.
I’m not going to reveal the last animal she picked, but it was one I — a biologist — had never heard of before. What a survivor it is, one that has managed to stay hidden from humans for decades.
All in all, this book is a tribute to the incredible diversity of animals on our planet, as well as a clear call that we need to conserve them.
Living Fossils will entrance budding biologists. Educators will appreciate the deep, careful research and extensive back matter. Investigate a copy today!
Copyright © 2020 Roberta Gibson All Rights Reserved.
Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
Super Scary Art
by Emily Kington (Author)
Booktalk: Get ready to create some spooktacular art! Make a grisly gargoyle, a garbage gobbler, a scary skeleton, and more. Simple instructions and photographs lead readers step-by-step through each activity.
Snippet:
It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
Copyright © 2020 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
5-Minute Really True Stories for Bedtime: 30 Amazing Stories
by Sally Symes, Jacie McCann, Jen Arena and Rachel Valentine (Authors) and Amy Grimes, Anneli Bray, Christine Cuddihy, Jacqui Lee, Joanne Liu, Katie Rewse, Katie Wilson, Maddy Vian, Natalie Smillie and Olivia Holden (Illustrators)
Booktalk: Why do we sleep? How do sharks snooze underwater? Where is the oldest bed in the world?
In this compendium of 5-minute really true stories about bedtime, you can find out the answers to all these questions, and many more!
Travel to Ancient Egypt to explore the beds of Tutankhamun, jet off into space to see how astronauts get ready for bed, or even plunge underwater to learn how hibernating turtles breathe through their bottoms!
Snippet:
See the book trailer.
It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
Copyright © 2020 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
Monster Measuring
by Madeline Tyler (Author) and Amy Li (Illustrator)
Booktalk: Some monsters are tall, and some are short! Some are heavy, and others are light! A simple introduction to measuring for early readers.
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It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
Copyright © 2020 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
My new Focus on STEM column: Makers in the Kitchen is in the October Quick Tips for Schools and Libraries newsletter.
Booktalk: Use these new books about food for a bundle of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry fun for makers and bakers (and eaters!) in the kitchen this fall.
Snippet: An after-school South Asian cooking club brings sixth-graders Sara and Elizabeth together as they struggle to adjust to middle school in A Place at the Table, a novel with alternating chapters from both girls written by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan.
It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
Copyright © 2020 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
Weird But True Halloween: 300 Spooky Facts to Scare You Silly
by Julie Beer (Author) and Michelle Harris (Author)
Booktalk: Discover 300 all-new spooky facts about candy, costumes, pumpkin carving, and more!
Snippet: Every Halloween approximately 600 million pounds (272 million kg) of candy are sold in the United States.
It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
Copyright © 2020 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
Who Will It Be?: How Evolution Connects Us All
by Paola Vitale (Author) and Rossana Bossù (Illustrator)
Booktalk: If gills appear, will it be a fish? From fish to frogs to humans, readers will learn about the theory of evolution and explore the connections between humans and all life on Earth.
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It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
Copyright © 2020 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
New this week is the picture book biography, Marjory Saves the Everglades: The Story of Marjory Stoneman Douglas by Sandra Neil Wallace and illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas grew up in Taunton, Massachusetts with her mother, but she fell in love with Florida. Later when she saw how all the unique plants like ghost orchids and Florida Scrub Ziziphus plus animals like roseate spoonbills, storks and even manatees were disappearing as the Everglades was being destroyed, she knew she had to act. Would she be able to make a difference?
Sandra Neil Wallace has distilled 108 year’s of Marjory’s life into 56 pages of essential reading. The back matter is so full of more facts, resources and a timeline that it has spilled into the end papers.
Rebecca Gibbon’s illustrations capture the lush green vegetation of Florida as well as Marjory’s lively disposition. Young readers will delight in finding all the hidden animals and plants in her illustrations of the Everglades.
Marjory Saves the Everglades will delight both young historians and conservationists alike. Wade into a copy today!
For the full review and ways to relate it to STEM, see Growing with Science blog.
Copyright © 2020 Roberta Gibson All Rights Reserved.
Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
How Can I Help During Covid-19?
by Emily Dolbear (Author)
Booktalk: In just a few short months, COVID-19 has drastically altered the world as we know it. With so much unknown about the disease and the virus that causes it, this is a scary and overwhelming time. After explaining what COVID-19 is, this short chapter book focuses on how kids can help during the pandemic.
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It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
Copyright © 2020 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
