STEM Friday

February 15, 2019

Do Doodlebugs Doodle?

I was in the mood for something fun and light this morning, so I’ve highlighted the picture book Do Doodlebugs Doodle? Amazing Insect Facts by Corinne Demas, Artemis Roehrig, and illustrated by Ellen Shi at Wrapped in Foil blog.

Overall, Do Doodlebugs Doodle? has a lot of positives going for it. First, there’s the engaging premise, which is to ask silly questions relating insect common names and then astonish the reader with an actual fact about that group. For example, the authors ask, “Do horseflies gallop?” The accompanying illustration shows a jockey riding a horsefly. Turning the page, the reader learns that although horseflies don’t gallop, they can fly faster than a horse can gallop. Cool!

Ellen Shi’s illustrations are just the right mix of silly fun and realistically-portrayed insects.

It also has some pedigree. Corinne Demas is an award-winning children’s author and Artemis Roehrig is a biologist who works with invasive insects. Persnickety Press is the sister imprint of the Cornell Lab Publishing Group, which is doing Jane Yolen’s wonderful bird series.

Despite all the positives, I have to admit I was a tiny bit disappointed with one aspect of this book. If you’re curious, visit the blog for more details.

The authors dedicate their book to budding entomologists. Check out a copy and find out if doodlebugs do indeed doodle.

February 15, 2019February 9, 2019

Sea Bear

Sea Bear: A Journey for Survival
by Lindsay Moore (Author / Illustrator)

Booktalk: A solitary polar bear travels across the sea ice in pursuit of food. As the ice melts and food becomes scarce, she is forced to swim for days. Finally, storm-tossed and exhausted, she finds shelter on land, where she gives birth to cubs and waits for the sea to freeze again. Includes backmatter about Arctic animals, climate change, and sea ice.

Snippet:
Polar bears are patient beasts,
as patient as glaciers.
We know how to hope and how to wait.
I learned to be patient long ago
from my polar bear mother–

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

February 15, 2019January 26, 2019

Charlotte’s Bones

Before I could read words, I “read” books by looking at pictures. My favorite book at the time was my dad’s geology textbook that had an entire section on fossils and dinosaurs. That could explain my love of children’s books about paleontology (the branch of science concerned with fossil animals and plants). So here’s a book about the lives of animals whose bones we find in stones…

Charlotte’s Bones: The Beluga whale in a farmer’s field
by Erin Rounds; illus. by Alison Carver
36 pages; ages 5-9
Tilbury House, 2018

Many thousands of years ago, when a sheet of ice more than a mile thick began to let go of the land… the Atlantic Ocean flooded great valleys…

Some of those glacier-scoured valleys were in Vermont. When they became part of the sea, Charlotte and her Beluga buddies swam into the bays. They hunted salmon and raised their young. But one day Charlotte got trapped in a marshy area and her pod could not rescue her.

What I like about this book: The wonderful way that Erin Rounds shows the process of decay and sedimentation that covered her. And how, thousands of years later, in 1849, railroad workers found Charlotte’s bones. A naturalist wanted to know more, so he pieced the bones together. Then he wondered, how did a whale get to a farmer’s field in Vermont?

I like the extensive back matter that helps to answer the naturalist’s questions. There is more information about other ice age mammals whose remains have been discovered in Vermont as well: Musk oxen, woolly mammoths, saber-toothed tigers.

Head over to Archimedes Notebook for another dino book review and some Beyond the Books activities.

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

February 8, 2019

Birds of Every Color

I don’t usually mention a book before it is published, but this week we are featuring Sneed B. Collard III’s new book Birds of Every Color, which is due out next month.

Right up front I should mention that this isn’t a concept book about colors. Instead, it delves deeply into the whys and hows of the fascinating array of bird feather hues.

For example, one page explains how birds get certain pigments from the food they eat and another explains about melanins, brown and black pigments that birds and other animals manufacture internally. Ever hear of psittacofulvins? You’ll find out about those, too.

Look closely and you will see bird colors may be different from place to place, season to season, and even between individual birds. Did you know that the extensiveness of the black bib of house sparrows. and the black and white patches on the heads of chickadees reflect their status in the flock?

As for the illustrations, on the last page we learn that either Sneed or his son, Braden took all the photographs for the book. Cool!

Birds of Every Color will enthrall budding ornithologists and nature lovers in general. Look for it in March.

If you love birds and want to participate in citizen science, check out the accompanying information and links for the Great Backyard Bird Count next weekend.

February 8, 2019February 7, 2019

Math Magic

My new Focus on STEM column: Math Magic is in the February Quick Tips for Schools and Libraries newsletter.

Booktalk: Make math fun and approachable with these pattern- and comparison-based projects.

Snippet: With only 28 days, February is the shortest month of the year–and halfway through it comes Valentine’s Day. After you teach the littlest ones to fold that red paper in half (using symmetry and scissors) to make a valentine, add a few more mathematics tricks to your repertoire. With these new books, activities, and tricks, mathematics can also be math-magic!?

Click here to see the six #kidlit math books and ten mathematics tricks in Math Magic.

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

February 8, 2019January 25, 2019

The Dinosaur Expert

The Dinosaur Expert
by Margaret McNamara; illus. by G. Brian Karas
40 pages; ages 4-8
Schwartz & Wade, 2018

Kimmy collected things so she could study them. She collected rocks
and shells
and leaves and pebbles and feathers.

I love books that inspire kids to follow their passions – even when their passion seems so out of the ordinary. And I especially love books that encourage girls to explore science.

This book opens with an illustration of Kimmy examining an ammonite from her fossil collection. Yes, she collects them, too. So on the day that Kimmy’s class is visiting the natural history museum, she is very excited. She knows a lot about dinosaurs and can’t wait to share. But when she mentions that she wants to be a scientist, one of the kids says, “Girls aren’t scientists.” And Kimmy stops talking.

What I ~~like~~ love about this book: I love the illustrations of the various dinosaurs. And I love the expressiveness of Kimmy’s face – readers will understand how she feels about the possibility that there is no place for her in paleontology. What I really love, though, is that the teacher nudges her towards an exhibit of Gasparinisaura, a dinosaur discovered by a woman.

And there is Back Matter (and you know how much I love that!). Titled “My Favorite Paleontologists by Kimmy”, we discover seven women who dug and sorted and identified dino bones. Six of them are alive and working in their field right now.

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

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

February 1, 2019February 1, 2019

One Iguana, Two Iguanas

Over at Wrapped in Foil Blog today we’re highlighting Sneed B. Collard III’s middle grade book: One Iguana, Two Iguanas: A Story of Accident, Natural Selection, and Evolution. It is a Junior Library Guild selection and earned a starred Kirkus Review.

You may have heard about the Darwin’s finches that live on the Galápagos islands, but did you know that there are two related, but very different species of iguana found there? One of the species lives on land and eats the fruit of the prickly pear cactus. The other species is the only iguana in the world that can swim in the ocean. It is the marine iguana.

Genetic testing have shown that the two species are related. Collard introduces the reader to a puzzle how the two such divergent lifestyles may have come about and how they ended up on an island chain 900 miles from their nearest relatives. He also discusses the geology and history of the islands, and how that impacts the iguanas and the other creatures that live there.

Although this is a middle grade book by text level and content, it is illustrated with many large color photographs. Many of the photographs were taken by the author, who is also a photographer. Others were taken by his friend Jack Grove.

As the author states in the back matter, “considering how important evolution is to the history of the earth, it’s surprising how few books for young people have been written about it.” One Iguana, Two Iguanas: A Story of Accident, Natural Selection, and Evolution steps in to fill the gap. This book is a must have for budding scientists and anyone interested in nature. Scoop up a copy today!

And, check Wrapped in Foil for more information and activity suggestions.

February 1, 2019January 31, 2019

The Lost Words

The Lost Words
by Robert Macfarlane (Author) and Jackie Morris (Illustrator)

Booktalk: In 2007, when a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary — widely used in schools around the world — was published, a sharp-eyed reader soon noticed that around forty common words concerning nature had been dropped. Apparently they were no longer being used enough by children to merit their place in the dictionary. The list of these “lost words” included acorn, adder, bluebell, dandelion, fern, heron, kingfisher, newt, otter, and willow. Among the words taking their place were attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail. The news of these substitutions — the outdoor and natural being displaced by the indoor and virtual — became seen by many as a powerful sign of the growing gulf between childhood and the natural world.

Ten years later, Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris set out to make a “spell book” that will conjure back twenty of these lost words, and the beings they name, from acorn to wren. By the magic of word and paint, they sought to summon these words again into the voices, stories, and dreams of children and adults alike, and to celebrate the wonder and importance of everyday nature.

Snippet:
fern

Fern’s first form is furled,
Each frond fast as a fiddle-head.
Reach, roll, and unfold follows.
Fern flares.
Now fern is fully fanned.

BONUS! Download the Explorer’s Guide

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

February 1, 2019January 24, 2019

The Boo-Boos the Changes the World

I love stories of accidental invention. This one is particularly fun to read.

The Boo-Boos that Changed the World
by Barry Wittenstein; illus. by Chris Hsu
32 pages; ages 4-8
Charlesbridge, 2018

Once upon a time, in 1917 actually, a cotton buyer named Earle Dickson married his beloved, Josephine, and they lived happily ever after. The End.

Uh, no – that’s actually the beginning. Otherwise it would be a very short story, right? It turns out that Josephine was accident prone. She cut herself on kitchen knives, grated her knuckles – whatever could happen would happen!

Earle had learned a bit about bandaging wounds from his dad, a doctor. So he tried to come up with a better way to make bandages that Josephine could use herself. Something that she could wind around a cut and that would stick on. Something easy… so he created what would eventually become Band Aids. The end. Except they weren’t as easy to use as he’d hoped. So how could they be improved?

What I like about this book: I love the fun way that author Barry Wittenstein tells about the accidental invention of Band Aids. I love that he tells part of it, and it seems to be complete, The End. But no, turn the page and there’s more! I like that Earle had to solve real problems, like how to make Band Aids sticky. And how to package them. And how big to make them. And how to market them. (Hint: who uses lots of Band Aids? Boy Scouts!)

And there is Back Matter (of course!). An author’s note tells more about Earle and his invention, provides a timeline, and a list of other medical inventions.

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

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

January 25, 2019January 24, 2019

This Little Scientist

This Little Scientist: A Discovery Primer
by Joan Holub (Author) and Daniel Roode (Illustrator)

Booktalk: A rhyming board book looks at famous scientists. The facing page has a fact written in prose.

Snippet:
ISAAC NEWTON
This little scientist
said we walk on the ground
because gravity stops us
from floating around.

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