STEM Friday

August 23, 2019August 22, 2019

Migration: Incredible Animal Journeys

Migration: Incredible Animal Journeys
by Mike Unwin (Author) and Jenni Desmond (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Animals of all shapes and sizes make epic journeys across our planet, through harsh weather, avoiding hungry predators, in their efforts to survive. Travel around the globe with some of the world’s most incredible animals and discover their unique migration stories.

Follow the emperor penguin through snow, ice and bitter temperatures; watch as the great white shark swims 10,000 km in search of seals; track huge herds of elephants, on their yearly hunt for water and be amazed at the millions of red crabs, migrating across Christmas Island.

Snippet:
POLE TO POLE
The Arctic tern travels farther than any other–all the way down the Atlantic Ocean to the Antarctic. While it’s winter in the Arctic, it’s summer in the Antarctic. So with twenty-four hours of daylight there, the tern can keep fishing as long as it likes.

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

August 23, 2019August 4, 2019

Wait, Rest, Pause

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)

August 16, 2019August 15, 2019

Summer Travel and STEM

My new Focus on STEM column: More Summer Travel is in the August Quick Tips for Schools and Libraries newsletter.

Booktalk: Celebrate two historic travel achievements with a summer travel book display and activity center.

Snippet: This past July, we celebrated the first moon landing that happened fifty years ago. Fifty years prior to that, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown flew an airplane with an open cockpit through fog and ice from Newfoundland to Ireland in the first nonstop, transatlantic flight. And it has now been five hundred summers since Ferdinand Magellan and his crew of 270 left Spain in five ships on their quest to circumnavigate the globe.

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

August 16, 2019July 22, 2019

A Happy Bluebird Year

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)

August 9, 2019August 8, 2019

Is 2 a Lot?

Is 2 a Lot?: An Adventure With Numbers
by Annie Watson (Author) and Rebecca Evans (Illustrator)

Booktalk: While Joey’s mom explains the context of numbers in vivid ways, Joey’s imagination transforms their ordinary car ride into a magical odyssey through a land of make-believe.

Snippet:
One day Joey had a very important question.

“Is 2 a lot?” he asked his mommy.

His mommy thought for a moment. Then she said,

“Well, TWO is not a lot of pennies . . .”

[TURN THE PAGE]

“but TWO is a lot of smelly skunks.”

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

August 9, 2019July 22, 2019

Rivers and Streams

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)

August 2, 2019August 1, 2019

If You Love Dolphins, You Could Be…

If You Love Dolphins, You Could Be…
by May Nakamura (Author) and Natalie Kwee (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Do you love dolphins and the ocean? Then you could be a marine biologist, an aquatic veterinarian, or an underwater filmmaker! Learn about these careers and more in this Level 2 beginning reader!

Snippet:

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

August 2, 2019July 25, 2019

The Apollo Missions for Kids

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)

July 26, 2019July 25, 2019

Ocean: Secrets of the Deep

Ocean: Secrets of the Deep
by Sabrina Weiss (Author) and Giulia De Amicis (Illustrator)

Booktalk: From clown fish to killer whales and sunlit coral reefs to smoking deep sea vents, welcome to our great global ocean! Discover menacing sharks, playful dolphins, clownfish, penguins, turtles, whales, shimmering jellyfish, gargantuan giant squid, and more . . .

Snippet:

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

Mathematics)

July 19, 2019July 18, 2019

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11
by Brian Floca (Author / Illustrator)

Booktalk: Now with eight additional pages of brand-new art and more in-depth information about the historic moon landing, here is the flight of Apollo 11 . . .

Snippet:

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