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Ever wonder what happens to our trash? Let's face it, there's definitely a lot of it.
In WHAT HAPPENS TO OUR TRASH, D.J. Ward fills young readers in on what we throw away and where it goes. Young readers will be astounded to learn that we make more trash than any other country (almost 5 pounds per person every day)and the amount of trash produced in America annually can fill up enough garbage trucks, lined up end to end, to reach the moon. But that's not all. Learn how a landfill works, what people shouldn't throw in their garbage can, and much more.
Everything is covered in this book and the fun-filled illustrations make learning about trash, well, not stinky! After a read through this one, young readers will just where their trash goes and will be the next generation that makes a lot less trash than we do now.
Additional Information:Paperback: 40 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061687553
ISBN-13: 978-0061687556
Source of review copy: PublisherDisclosure: Some of the books I review are received from publishers , PR agencies, and authors, but it does not sway my opinion of the book.
Children are inquisitive and if you're a parent, you're probably bombarded with questions daily like...
-Why do I have to brush my teeth?
-Why are some eggs brown and some white?
-Why do onions make you cry?
-Why is the sky blue?
Chances are you're usually explaining away, but if you need to come up for air or maybe just don't know why worms come out when it's wet (no shame in that), it's time to pick up a copy of WHY: THE BEST EVER QUESTION AND ANSWER BOOK ABOUT NATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE WORLD AROUND YOU by Catherine Ripley.
My kids and I can't get enough of this book. There are so many fun questions and they're broken up into sections: Bathtime, Supermarket, Nighttime, Outdoor, Kitchen, and Farm Animal. And what makes this book resonate with young readers is the fact that the questions were submitted by real children. The 10th Anniversary Edition not only offers all of the fun facts you're looking for, but it offers fun illustrations that will have your young readers picking this one up time and time again.
Additional Information:Reading level: Ages 3 and up
Hardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: Owlkids Books; Tenth Anniversary Edition edition (November 1, 2010)
ISBN-10: 1926818008
ISBN-13: 978-1926818009
Source of review copy: PublisherDisclosure: Some of the books I review are received from publishers , PR agencies, and authors, but it does not sway my opinion of the book.
By:
Betsy Bird,
on 11/3/2011
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Alicia Alonso: Prima Ballerina
By Carmen T. Bernier-Grand
Illustrated by Raul Colon
Marshall Cavendish
$19.99
ISBN: 978-0-7614-5562-2
Ages 8-11
On shelves now
When I was a kid I took a fair amount of ballet. I liked it. Kept me on my toes (yuk yuk yuk). I retain fond memories of that time in my life, but don’t be fooled. I’m just as likely to groan when I see a children’s biography of a ballerina as anyone. “Not another one!” I’ll kvetch. Never mind that ballerina bios don’t exactly stuff my shelves to overflowing. Never mind that when artists like Raul Colon are involved the end result is going to be magic. Never mind that author Carmen T. Bernier-Grand has attempted to sate my unquenchable thirst for original biographies of people never covered in the children’s sphere before. It was only when my fellow librarians repeated the phrase, “No. Really. It’s incredibly good” to me in about thirty different ways that I finally picked the dang thing and cracked it open. Fun Fact: It’s incredibly good. Who knew? [Aside from all those children's librarians, of course.] From the pen of Ms. Bernier-Grand comes a biography that tells the balanced, nuanced story of a woman pursuing the art form she loves in the face of personal tragedies, political upheavals, and worldwide acclaim/blame.
A child named Alicia Ernestina de la Caridad del Cobre Martinez y del Hoyo dances in her Cuban home. “Like light, / she’s barely aware / of the floor beneath her dancing feet.” Few could suspect at the time that she would grow up to become perhaps the greatest Cuban ballerina in the world. After years of practice she marries at fifteen to a fellow dancer and moves to New York. It’s there that she is discovered, just in time for her retina to detach. But even blinded she dances in her head and when she comes back to the stage her toe shoes are glued to her feet with blood. Back in Cuba she starts a dance company that suffers under the dictator Batista and does better under Castro. When the decision comes to dance for Cuba or the U.S. she stays with her roots, to the admonishment of the exiles. To this day she dances still. A final author’s note, list of ballets she’s performed, awards received, a Chronology, Glossary of terms, Sources, Website, and Notes appear at the end.
Books for children that deal with Cuba make me wish I had been a better student in school. My knowledge of the Cuban Revolution comes in bits and pieces, fits and starts. Recently we’ve seen quite a few titles concerning this moment in history but often I found them strangely black and white. In books like “The Red Umbrella” for example, characters were portrayed as incredibly black and white. When one starts to join with Castro, she becomes evil near instantaneously. Sometimes historical choices and moments have bits of gray in there, though. Part of the reason I liked Alicia Alonso as much as I did had to do with these gray areas. First off, it was one of the few books to speak about Dictator Batista. Next, here you have a woman who chose to stay in Cuba. As the Author’s Note explains, “Alicia had
I'm so not ready for winter. I dread shoveling, cold feet, chapped lips and dry skin. That's why I prefer to keep channeling summer for as long as I can and one part of summer that I absolutely love is butterflies.
Butterflies are an amazing species as they ride the wind and drift through the air. Their wings are often artwork in of themselves with bright colors and beautiful patterns. That's why I couldn't resist the latest picture book by award-winning science writer Seymour Simon, BUTTERFLIES.
This amazing book showcases Simon's latest full-color photographs and will delight and amaze readers with facts such as monarch butterflies travel 3,000 miles to their winter homes, butterflies that flew 100 million years ago look very much like those you see sipping nectar from flowers today, and although butterflies and moths are alike, one way to tell the difference is to look a their antennae.
This is a great addition to any library or home collection and there are lots of support materials for BUTTERFLIES. Educators and parents can download a
free Teachers Guide with lots of supplementary information and activities, as well as a guide to starting your own butterfly garden. Kids can
click here to download your own Butterfly Observation Log, and record your sightings like a real lepidopterologist (that’s a scientist who studies butterflies).
Too bad we all can't travel to our winter homes like the monarch butterfly, but with this beautiful book, at least we can imagine sitting in our backyards on a hot summer day watching the butterflies fly by.
Additional Information:
Reading level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover: 32 pages
Publisher: Collins (August 23, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0061914932
ISBN-13: 978-0061914935
Source of review copy: Publisher
This post is part of Nonfiction Monday! Nonfiction Monday takes place every Monday as various blogs throughout the kidlitosphere write about nonfiction books for kids and collect them all in one place. This week, check out the Nonfiction Monday roundup at
100 Scope Notes. To see the entire schedule, please visit the blog of
Anastasia Suen.
Disclosure: Some of the books I review are received from publishers , PR agencies, and authors, but it does not sway my opinion of the book.
By:
Betsy Bird,
on 9/23/2011
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The Fabulous Flying Machines of Alberto Santos-Dumont
By Victoria Griffith
Illustrated by Eva Montanari
Abrams Books for Young Readers
$16.95
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0011-8
Ages 6-10
On shelves now
The American publishing industry is good at a lot of things. They produce some pretty delightful fare for children on a variety of different topics. If you want vampires or stories of cute puppies or twists on fairy tales then you are in luck. If, however, you’re looking for something about people who are famous in countries other than America, I have bad news. We’re not that great at highlighting other nations’ heroes. Oh, you’ll see such a biography once in a rare while but unless they’re a world figure (Gandhi, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.) we’re not usually going to hear much about them. Maybe that’s part of the reason I get so excited when I see books that buck the trend. Books like Victoria Griffith’s The Fabulous Flying Machines of Alberto Santos-Dumont. The other reason is that in a greedy way I get to learn about new historical figures along with the child readers. Alberto Santos-Dumont, for all his charms, is not exactly a household name here in the States. Credit where credit is due, then since author Victoria Griffith is doing what she can to remedy that problem.
If you were a resident of Paris, France in the early 20th century you might have glanced up into the sky to see one Alberto Santos-Dumont in his handy dandy dirigible. A transplanted Brazilian and fan of the power of flight, Alberto was friends with Louis Cartier who bestowed upon him a wrist-based alternative to the pocket watch. Now he could time himself in the sky! Determined to create an official flying machine, Alberto announces the date and location that he intends to use one to take to the sky. But when sneaky Louis Bleriot arrives with the intention of stealing Alberto’s thunder, the question of who will go down in the history books is (ha ha) up in the air.
I’m having a bit of difficulty believing that this is Victoria Griffith’s first book for children. To my mind, writing nonfiction picture books for young readers is enormously difficult. You sit in front of a plate of facts with the goal of working them into something simultaneously honest and compelling for kids. Taken one way, the book’s a dud. Taken another, it does its subject justice. Griffith, for her part, takes to the form like a duck to water. The first sentence is “Alberto Santos-Dumont loved floating over Paris in his own personal flying machine.” After the first few pages don’t be too surprised if the kids you’re reading this book with start wondering why exactly it is that we don’t have our own personal dirigibles (this question is promptly answered when we learn that Alberto’s preferred mode of transportation had a tendency to .. um… catch on fire). Deftly weaving together the invention of the Cartier watch with Alberto’s moment in history, Griffith manages to create compelling characters and a situation that lets kids understand what was at stake in this story.
She also places Alberto squarely within his context in history. In the book we learn that while the Wright Brothers did fly at Kitty Hawn before Santos-Dumont, because their flight needed assistance then it wasn’t really flying. Griffith prefers to explain this not in the text but in the Author’s Note, but I think that’s fair. As long as you make clear to kids that there can be two different opinions on a
Everywhere you go, you can spot the popularity of 3-D (and even 4-D)! Whether it be in the movie theaters or even home theater systems, 3-D continues to amaze us. That's why it's no surprise that 3-D is "literally" popping up in books, too!
Two of those books are Puppies in 3-D
and Kittens in 3-D
. Each book does an amazing job of causing these animals to spring off the page right into your lap.
Poodles to Pomeranians, French Bulldogs to Yorkshire Terriers, Chihuahuas to Jack Russel Terriers--you name it, Puppies in 3-D features all of our favorite puppy breeds! Young readers will be fascinated to learn about each breed, including its origin, physical appearance and character.
And as you can probably figure out, Kittens in 3-D
6 Comments on 3-D popping up in children's books, last added: 8/11/2011
The Incredible Life of Balto
By Meghan McCarthy
Alfred A. Knopf (an imprint of Random House)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-375-84460-7
Ages 4 and up
On shelves August 9th
I’m not a dog person. Like ‘em fine. Don’t see much particular need to interact with them on a regular basis. Sometimes, though, I’ll feel like my life as a children’s librarian would have been easier if I had been a canine fanatic. A large swath of children’s literature each year is dedicated to man’s best friend. This year alone I’ve seen dogs traveling vast distances to be reunited with their loved ones (A Dog’s Way Home), convince kids that they are transformed accountants (The Ogre of Oglefort), and even appear as gallons of orange juice (When Life Gives You O.J.). Nonfiction doggies proliferate as well but I can usually steer clear of them. Unless Meghan McCarthy is involved, of course. Then I’m going to have to see what all the fuss is about. In this particular case, Ms. McCarthy has taken what at first appears to be a well-known story then finds the lesser known tales lurking inside of it. The result is a biography that’s bound to please dog lovers and dog neutrals (like myself) alike.
The year: 1925. The place: Nome, Alaska. The problem: An epidemic of diphtheria was imminent and yet a horrible blizzard was preventing all incoming planes from delivering the much needed serum. The solution: Balto. Sled dogs, you see, were dispatched with the serum on board and Balto was at the head of one of these teams. When Balto’s group missed the next team at the next checkpoint, they were lead onward by Balto until they got to Nome themselves. That’s the story lots of people know. What is less well known is what happened next. Balto was celebrated throughout the States, appearing in movies, on dog food cans, and even earning a statue in Central Park. Sadly, he and his team went on the vaudeville circuit and ended up underfed and neglected. Yet surprisingly the good people of Cleveland banded together to purchase the brave dog and his sled mates. As a result he spent the remainder of his days running around the Brookside Zoo where he, “could relax and enjoy the rest of his life.”
The queen of the amusing nonfiction picture book for young readers, McCarthy’s titles are always remarkable because they cover ground no one else does. Whether it’s the invention of bubble gum or a false report of an alien invasion, McCarthy’s titles are always wholly new. That’s why I was so surprised by her choice to tackle Balto next. As real
Tim Ostermeyer is a Master photographer who has won over 250 first place awards for his photography and if you get the chance to pick up
Snowball's Antarctic Adventures
you'll see why.
When Snowball realizes that all he can see is other Emperor penguins, he decides to explore Antarctica with his Emperor penguin friends. They tour Antarctica to find five other types of wildlife, locate beautiful Antarctic snow mountains, discover scenic icebergs, and treasure fun adventures. What kind of Antarctic wildlife will Snowball find? What shape mountains and icebergs will Snowball discover? Will he ride on his mother's feet the entire trip, or will he start to walk on his own?
This picture book is written in rhyme, but it's the amazing photography that steals the show. Young readers will be delighted to witness the amazing life of these penguins amongst snow-capped mountains and on several pages, you'll find interesting facts about different kinds of penguins and animals you'd find in Antarctica. As you turn the page and discover beautiful scenery and fascinating animals, you'll find yourself wanting to dart off to the Antarctic coastland.
Ostermeyer has written five children's wildlife books on baby foxes, polar bears, tigers and snow monkeys. You can learn more at www.
FunAdventureWildlifeBooks.com
Additional Information:Hardcover: 48 pages
Publisher: Wildlife Adventure Books (April 1, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0979422833
ISBN-13: 978-0979422836
Source of review copy: PublicistDisclosure: Some of the books I review are received from publishers , PR agencies, and authors, but it does not sway my opinion of the book. I maintain affiliate accounts with Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If you purchase a book through one of my links, I will receive a small commission (at no cost to you). You can support this site by originating your purchase via these links and I appreciate your support of Lori Calabrese Writes!
There are certain authors who acquire a devout following--Jan Brett, Sandra Boynton, Mo Willems. Well, add Janet Halfmann to my list. I'm constantly amazed at not just the number of books written by Janet Halfmann, but the number of quality books written by Halfmann, ranging from nonfiction books for the Smithsonian's Backyard series to Seven Miles to Freedom: The Robert Smalls Story
to beautiful bedtime stories like Good Night, Little Sea Otter
.
Halfmann's latest addition is Star of the Sea: A Day in the Life of a Starfish
. In this beautiful picture book, Halfmann takes a look not at the stars that blink in the night sky, but another star that clings to the rocks with hundreds of sticky tube feet-- an ochre sea star. Young readers will be fascinated as an ochre sea star hunts for her morning meal. But they'll especially appreciate how the ochre sea star's mouth is on her underside, tiny red eyespots at the tips of her rays tell her light from dark, she somersaults, and protects herself with her tough, spiny top.
What I especially love about Halfmann's books are her knack for writing a beautiful story, while weaving in interesting facts about such amazing creatures. Joan Paley's beautiful artwork adds to the story, while information about the amazing sea stars wraps it all up. For anyone captivated by the wonder of sea stars, this is a must have.
Additional Information:
Reading level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover: 32 pages
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR); First Edition edition (May 24, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0805090738
ISBN-13: 978-0805090734
Source of review copy: Publisher
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By:
Betsy Bird,
on 6/19/2011
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Eat Your Math Homework: Recipes for Hungry Minds
By Ann McCallum
Illustrated by Leeza Hernandez
Charlesbridge
$16.95
ISBN: 978-1-57091-779-0
Ages 7-11
On shelves July 1st.
Cooking. Math. Not the usual subject matter for a kid browsing the library shelves (though I’ve admittedly had more than one kid ask me for cookbooks, so there’s that). Still and all, when I encounter a book like Eat Your Math Homework I think about its intended audience. Look this book up on a site like Amazon and you’ll learn that it was written for the 9-12 aged set. That may well be, but what you’re dealing with is a picture book, for all practical intents and purposes. So it would be a particularly confident tween that picks this puppy up on their own. That isn’t to say it doesn’t have a grand purpose, though. When I read this collaboration between Ann McCallum and Leeza Hernandez I realized that what I had here was a book with a million uses. Parents often approach children’s librarians looking for “the math books”. Thanks to the ever-helpful Dewey Decimal system, these are easy to find. Delve a little deeper into that particular request, however, and you’ll find that what they really want are books about math that are fun, original, and cover specific topics that the kids aren’t quite getting in school. Generally this is when I call upon Stuart J. Murphy and his math titles to aid us in our hour of need, but when a truly creative approach is swauews then only one solution will do: make it tasty. And tasty is the name of the game with this mathie/foodie concoction.
Fibonacci numbers, fractions, tessellations, tangrams, pi, and probability. Pair with snack sticks, chips, brownies, cookies, pizza, and trail mix. Stir together. Serve. In McCallum’s latest title, explaining simple math concepts hinges on kitchen recipes. Want to understand the idea of probability? Hand out some trail mix then follow the book’s directions in showing your guests how to calculate theoretical probability. Fractions more your thing? Make some chips out of tortillas, cutting them into different fractions along the way. Accompanied by Leeza Hernandez’s peppy illustrations, Eat Your Math Homework understands that sometimes making an idea delicious is the best way to cement a concept in the heads of your intended audience.
In this era of child obesity it’s a challenge for any author to write a book of recipes and not fill it with too many sugary or salty snacks. With that in mind, I can only assume that Ms. McCallum had to be especially careful about pairing one recipe with a math concept, and vice-versa. Of course it’s easy to flip too far on the other side of the equation and to ONLY include carrot sticks and cauliflower clumps. This book makes for a nice compromise. You have your speared pineapple in the Fibonacci Snack Sticks and your raisin and Cheerio Probability Trail Mix on the one hand and your Tessellating Two-Color Brownies and Milk and Tangram Cookies on the other. As for the recipes themselves, I’ll confess to you that I haven’t tried any of them. That said, they’re kind of fascinating. Often a seemingly simple recipe will contain a surprising “secret ingredient” that makes you want to try it out in spite of yourself. Consider the inclusion of “½ cup of orange juice” in the brownie recipe, or the “¼ cup hot chocolate drink powder” for the tangram cookies.
Debut illustrator Leeza Hernande
Jimi Sounds Like A Rainbow: a story of the Young Jimi Hendrix
by Gary Golio, illustrated by Javaka Steptoe. Clarion, 2010. (review copy provided by the publisher)
When I mentioned there was a children's book about Hendrix to the teacher dressed like Jimi Hendrix for our "dress like a rock star" day at school a few weeks ago, everyone within earshot was stunned.
"A book for kids?"
The story of Hendrix's death has overshadowed his music. When one of the children asked the teacher if he was dressed as Michael Jackson, I wondered if any children at the school had even heard of Hendrix.
Golio tells Hendrix's story with poetic language and imagery.
With every sound, a color
glowed in Jimmy's mind
Blue was the whoosh of cool water splashing over rocks.
Orange and red, the crackling of a campfire.
Green, the rustle of a thousand leaves.
Did Jimmy really see the world in this way or is this poetic license? This feels researched and informed thanks to the extensive list of research sources, the discography of music and videos, and website list included at the end.
Golio imparts a great deal of information about Hendrix's life without resorting to a dry narration of facts. We understand there is no mother in the boy's life through the descriptions of his relationship with his father.
At night, he'd listen to Dad croon along with
gospel, jazz or blues reconrds on the old
phonograph. A song by Muddy Waters--with
its wailing guitar and harmonica--set off
fireworks in his mind.
Jimmy was fascinated with all kinds of sound and his imagination saw colors in the noises and rhythms of the city and nature. The boy was also an artist, often sketching and painting. A self-taught guitarist, his music took off in a whole new direction when he acquired an electric guitar and discovered how amps and guitar strings could be used to create a unique sounds.
Javaka Steptoe's artwork startles and compels the reader to look deeper into the pictures. His illustrator's note describes his process of delving into the music and the neighborhood of Jimmy's childhood. For his canvas, he used plywood from the Seattle (Hendrix's childhood home) RE Store, an emporium of salvaged and reclaimed building materials. These pictures are vibrant collages of plywood and paint and photo prints. The rough texture and grain of the plywood plays under paint that is a translucent wash in some areas and a thick layer in others. On the last, two-page, vertical spread, Steptoe's boyish Jimmy evolves into
Jimi and the final iconic image of Hendrix from posters and album covers, He renders the musician in purple (Purple Haze?)
The author addresses Hendrix's death honestly and in a straight forward manner in the author's note. He focuses on substance abuse and addic
By:
Betsy Bird,
on 5/22/2011
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Nurse, Soldier, Spy: The Story of Sarah Edmonds, a Civil War Hero
By Marissa Moss
Illustrated by John Hendrix
Abrams Books for Young Readers
$18.95
ISBN: 978-0-8109-9735-6
Ages 6-12
On shelves now.
If I want to depress myself on a given day I’ll compare the list of biographical subjects that kids in school are handed to pick and choose from with the biographical subjects that I had to pick and choose from when I was a kid some twenty odd years ago. It’s disheartening. Essentially, it’s the same list. Teachers always include Edison, Einstein, Washington, Tubman, Keller, etc. Once in a while someone will fall out of favor (Benjamin Banneker) to be replaced with someone new (Matthew Henson) but that’s just the way of things. How I long for the day when the core biographical subjects are thrown out the window and kids can take full advantage of the range of amazing stories in their libraries’ biography sections. That’ll be the day when a kid has an assignment to find a historical female hero who fought in a war and I can hand them Nurse, Soldier, Spy: The Story of Sarah Edmonds, a Civil War Hero. Until then, I’ll just have to hawk the book on its own merits. Fortunately, this is not too terribly difficult to do.
I’m sure you’ve all heard stories of those women who cut their hair, donned men’s clothes, and joined the armed forces during the Civil War. Many a woman did this, but few were as brave and inventive as Sarah Edmonds. Having run away from home at the age of sixteen to escape an arranged marriage, Sarah had been living as a man for three years when she returned to Michigan to join the Union cause. On the field she proved a brave nurse, soldier, and eventual spy. When told to spy on the enemy, Sarah became a believable black male slave and managed to extract some much needed information across enemy lines. An Author’s Note at the end explains how the rest of Sarah’s life went and how she became “the only woman invited to join the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), the association for Civil War veterans of the Union Army.”
Marissa Moss is best known for her Amelia’s Notebook series, an early chapter book grouping of titles that served as the precursor to the current Diary of a Wimpy Kid journal boom we’re now in. I was under the distinct impression that fiction was Ms. Moss’s one and only bag, and this feeling was helped in no small part by the biographical sketch of her that appears on this title’s bookflap. Dig a little deeper, however, and you see that Ms. Moss has a longstanding appreciation of history that has manifested itself in a variety of different ways over the years. Penning everything from historical novels like Galen: My Life in Imper
Sabbithry Persad is the creator of Garbology Kids™ and author of Where Do Recyclable Materials Go? (Garbology Kids). Sabbithry Persad has been writing stories and poems since she was a child growing up on the island of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Her childhood was filled with many siblings and countless well-read, entertaining books from literature and scientific magazines to comic books and encyclopedias.
Now, Sabbithry Persad shares her enthusiasm for reading and writing through publishing and authoring books. Persad is the founder and executive managing editor of Green Solutions Magazine and a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. She lives in Toronto.
I'm excited to be a part of Persad's virtual book tour and she's stopping by today to tell us more about her new book and what parents can do to make every day Earth Day.
Tell us about your path to publication.
This is a great question. As a former technical writer, moving into educational writing was somewhat of a natural step since writing educational materials also rely on facts. The challenging part, and the big learning curve, came when switching from writing for adults to writing for children. Children’s picture books, in particular, have a very specific format. Understanding the nuances of this format was the first step before writing. Once grasped the format, the structure of the material followed.
Although this is a children’s book, the preparation for writing the book found me performing quite a bit of research to gather information, which then had to be organized in a cohesive and story-like manner. Much of the raw information I came across was in bits and pieces, and sometimes not very clear. It was my goal to take all those pieces and put them together in a single story, somewhat like working on a puzzle or even a painting. Once the story took shape, the back matter was the next step.
The back matter of the book needed to be supplemental to what was being covered in the story (the “read” section). The back matter is divided into three parts: think, do and parent’s sections. The “think” section combined “Fun Facts” and “For Reflection”, while the “do” section allowed children to learn about an environmental profession with “Be a …” and perform hand-on activities with “Experiments and Activities.” With both sections I strived to deliver a balance between fun stuff and some practical real-life learning exercises. The parent’s section provides parents with an intro to the series and shows the entire recycling process and waste management hierarchy in hopes of giving them a perspective of where recycling fits into the larger picture; it also functions as a tool for parents to help explain the same to children.
Throughout the entire process, I referred often to standard educational environmental guidelines, keeping them close at hand to stay on track. After completing the first draft of the text, the book w
Looking for a book to share with your young readers on Earth Day?
Where Do Recyclable Materials Go? (Garbology Kids)
by Sabbithry Persad teaches young readers about reusable resources--everything we might throw out that can be used to make new products again. And the story begins with a dog named Bubbles, who likes to chase the recyclable truck! In an attempt to find Bubbles, Tiana and Peter start checking the recycle truck's pick up stops. And along the way, they learn everything about the MURF, the Recycling facility; how we know what to recycle; and how important recycling is for the environment.
Facts are shared on each page such as how the recyclables are sorted at the MURF, and what recycling saves. At the end of the book, an entire page is dedicated to fun recycling facts, a list of questions are provided for you to ask your young readers, experiments and activities are provided, and you'll also find out how to be a garbologist.
Children will enjoy the story of Tiana, Peter and Bubbles, while the colorful illustrations and diagrams teach them all about recycling. This is a great resource to celebrate Earth Day and for any classroom looking to introduce young readers to key concepts while challenging them to think about the world around them.
To learn more about the book and series, please visit the official website,
Garbology Kids and check out the book trailer:
Additional Information:Reading Level: Ages 5 and up
Paperback (April 2011)
ISBN-13: 9780981243900
Source of review copy: Publisher
This post is part of Nonfiction Monday! Nonfiction Monday takes place every Monday as various blogs throughout the kidlitosphere write about nonfiction books for kids and collect them all in one place. This week, check out the Nonfiction Monday roundup at
L.L. Owens. To see the entire schedule, please visit the blog of
Anastasia Suen.
Disclosure: Some of the books I review are received from publishers , PR agencies, and authors, but it does not sway my opinion of the book. I maintain affiliate accounts with Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If you purchase a book through one of my links, I will receive a small commission (at no cost to you). You can support this site by originating your purchase via these links and I appreciate your support of Lori Calabrese Writes!
Do you want to wow your young readers?
In Baby Animal Pop!: With 5 Incredible, Life-Size Fold-Outs (National Geographic Little Kids)
, young readers will definitely be wowed by the 5 incredible life-size foldouts of their favorite baby animals. And it all starts when you open the cover and discover three adorable baby bunnies! The other life-size foldouts include a baby lamb, pony, pigs, and ducks. But as if the foldouts aren't enough, young readers will learn all about them. For example, they'll be fascinated learning what the difference between a hare and a rabbit is, that a mommy rabbit is called a doe, that pigs have no sweat glands, pigs have four toes on each foot, and Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the U.S. grazed sheep on the White House lawn!
There are so many fun-filled facts along with fascinating photos that National Geographic is renowned for. And when you're done reading, continue to wow away as you turn the page to reveal how big these baby animals really are.
Additional Information:
Reading level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover: 20 pages
Publisher: National Geographic Children's Books; Pop edition (February 8, 2011)
ISBN-10: 1426307659
ISBN-13: 978-1426307652
Source of review copy: Publicist
This post is part of Nonfiction Monday! Nonfiction Monday takes place every Monday as various blogs throughout the kidlitosphere write about nonfiction books for kids and collect them all in one place. This week, check out the Nonfiction Monday roundup at
Practically Paradise. To see the entire schedule, please visit the blog of
Anastasia Suen.
Disclosure: Some of the books I review are received from publishers , PR agencies, and authors, but it does not sway my opinion of the book. I maintain affiliate accounts with Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If you purchase a book through one of my links, I will receive a small commission (at no cost to you). You can support this site by originating your purchase via these links and I appreciate your support of Lori Calabrese Writes!
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If you’re looking for an excellent nonfiction picture book about one of America’s most daring and courageous women to share with children during Women in History month, I highly recommend Night Flight: Amelia Earhart Crosses the Atlantic. The book was written by Robert Burleigh and illustrated by Wendell Minor. It is an outstanding package of text and art that provides a gripping account of Earhart’s historic transatlantic flight from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to a pasture in Northern Ireland in May 1932.
Burleigh’s text is lively and lyrical. Here is how he describes the takeoff of Earhart’s Vega—her Little Red Bus:
The plane swoops like a swallow
Over dark puddles and patches of tundra.
The shore gleams in waning light.
The waves are curls of cream-colored froth.
As the pilot flies east into the darkness, Burleigh describes how the sky appears to her:
The moon peeks between wisps of shimmering clouds.
Distant stars flicker and fade. Her mind soars.
Earhart’s flight appears to be off to an auspicious start—but around midnight it becomes an adventure fraught with danger. That’s when her plane is pummeled by rain during a thunderstorm. About an hour later, her altimeter breaks. Earhart tries to climb above the storm. Her plane becomes sluggish because ice has formed on its wings. It begins to pitch and spin. Then the plane starts to nose-dive downward. Earhart finally gains control of it after it bursts through the lowest clouds. She manages to level her Vega just ten feet above the surface of the Atlantic Ocean!
Earhart isn’t out of danger yet. She still has many miles to go before she’ll reach land. Alone in the cockpit, she sniffs salts and sips juice from a can. Around three o’clock, flames stream out of the cracked exhaust pipe. By 6:00 a.m., Amelia’s eyes burn and her stomach “churns from the smell of leaking gas.”
Then…
Black turns to a watery silt. The gloomy sky pales.
Splinters of sunlight stab down through cloud slits
And brace themselves on the vault of the open sea.
Earhart looks out of her cockpit and sees: a boat…a drifting gull…an emerging coastline...train tracks. She find
By:
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on 2/24/2011
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Me . . . Jane
By Patrick McDonnell
Little Brown and Company
$15.99
ISBN: 978-0-316004546-9
Ages 4-8
On shelves April 5th
Pity the picture book biographer. Theirs is not an easy lot. Seems to me that if you want to introduce a six-year-old to a famous person there are two ways of going about it. The first way is the David Adler method. He’s the fellow behind all those “A Picture Book of” books. Adler’s specialty is synthesizing a person into 32 or 40 odd pages. Along the way he has to boil down a human life into as pure and simple a telling as possible. Sometimes this method works well, and sometimes it doesn’t, but it used to be the only way of creating children’s biographies. Then there’s method #2: You take your subject and select just a moment from their life. Which is to say, you give them breadth and depth and meaning, then do the whole summary of who they actually were in the Endnotes. The advantage to this method is that you can actually explain a concept to a kid, by making the biographical subject into a kind of literary character. Biographies of famous people that limit their focus almost entirely to their subjects’ childhoods are actually kind of rare. Famous people do not necessarily arise out of interesting, cheerful childhoods, after all. So really, one of the many things that I admire about Patrick McDonnell’s first foray into non-fiction is that his subject, Jane Goodall, presents him with early years that were practically custom made to be relayed. The result, Me . . . Jane is the rare picture book biography that manages to please biography fans, fiction fans, and chimpanzee fans (albeit, stuffed) alike.
Young Jane noticed things. Outdoorsy things. With her stuffed chimp Jubilee at her side, there were lots of mysteries to notice too. Jane was the type to climb tall trees on sunny days, or to hide in the chicken coop to uncover the source of eggs. When she read her Tarzan she’d want to be in Africa with all the animals just like him. And when she got older, her dreams really did come true. Backmatter include a short section “About Jane Goodall” and a “A Message from Jane” herself.
Odds are that McDonnell’s a familiar name on the comics page of your local newspaper. Known primarily as the man behind the MUTTS comic strip, I think it’s fair to say that McDonnell wasn’t the obvious person to write this book. I say that, even though I’m aware that animal rights are his passion. We’re talking about a guy that’s a member of the Humane Society’s board of directors and who has used MUTTS as a way of drawing attention to everything from The Wildlife Land Trust to New Jersey’s animal population control fund. However, I have seen his previous picture books. They have names like Just Like Heaven and Hug Time and for my desiccated, not to say sardonic, heart and soul they do nothing for me. Animal cuteness is not one of my weaknesses. So when I discovered that McDonnell was tackling a real person and a real life I approached the idea with more than a mite bit of trepidation. Jane Goodall, let’s face it, would be easy to cutesy up (all the more so when you learn about her life). Though it was his idea in the first place, was McDonnell the right guy to tell her tale? Answer: Yup. This isn’t to say that I wouldn’t like to see her life de
Children can't get enough dinosaur books, so Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld has come to the rescue with Where Did Dinosaurs Come From? (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2)
There are many mysteries when it comes to dinosaurs, but possibly the biggest is... Where did dinosaurs come from? To find out, Zoehfeld looks way back in time. Children will be fascinated as they discover fossils--the earliest fossils from creatures that lived in the sea, the first backboned animals, and mammal relatives. They'll also enjoy venturing through the Triassic period to the Jurassic to the Cretaceous. Young readers will explore why early mammal relatives couldn't have been dinosaur ancestors and they'll dive into some of the important features all early meat-eating dinosaurs had. And don't forget about the first plant-eating dinosaurs who are covered as well.
This is a wonderful addition to any dinosaur lover's collection. The pastel illustrations will leave you in awe of these creatures who lived long ago and the informative text will have young minds trying to uncover one of the biggest mysteries of all.
Additional Information:
Reading level: Ages 5-9
Hardcover: 40 pages
Publisher: Collins (December 21, 2010)
ISBN-10: 0060290226
ISBN-13: 978-0060290221
Source of review copy: Publisher
This post is part of Nonfiction Monday! Nonfiction Monday takes place every Monday as various blogs throughout the kidlitosphere write about nonfiction books for kids and collect them all in one place. This week, check out the Nonfiction Monday roundup at
The Miss Rumphius Effect. To see the entire schedule, please visit the blog of
Anastasia Suen.
Disclosure: Some of the books I review are received from publishers , PR agencies, and authors, but it does not sway my opinion of the book. I maintain affiliate accounts with Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If you purchase a book through one of my links, I will receive a small commission (at no cost to you). You can support this site by originating your purchase
Under the Snow
Written by Melissa Stewart
Illustrated by Constance R. Bergum
Peachtree, 2009
When it’s cold outside and snow blankets the ground, it may appear that there’s little animal life around. But appearances can be deceiving! Just because we can’t see something, it's not proof that “something” isn’t there. Because…under the snow—tucked into gaps in stone walls and in underground burrows and inside rotting logs and beneath layers of fallen leaves and buried in the mud at the bottoms of ponds—many animals spend the winter unseen by human eyes.
Melissa Stewart’s nonfiction picture book is about the animals that are resting/sleeping/living somewhere “under the snow” hidden from view during the coldest months of the year.
This large format book with spare text and realistic watercolor illustrations is lovely in its simplicity. It is an excellent book to read to young children as an introduction to hibernation.
Here’s how Stewart begins the book:
You spend your days sledding and skating
and having snowball fights.
But under the snow lies a hidden world.
Then author Stewart takes us on a tour of a field, the forest, a pond, a wetland, and tells us what animals are hidden “under the snow” in those four different habitats. And illustrator Bergum shows us those animals, which include the following:
Ladybugs clustered together in a gap in an old stone wall
A vole tunneling through the snow
A centipede and bumblebee queen inside a rotting log
A wood frog nestled beneath a layer of fallen leaves
Bluegills swimming slowly in chilly pond water
A turtle buried in mud at the bottom of a pond
A beaver family huddling together inside their cozy lodge
Art and text work perfectly together to “show-and-tell” young readers about the many forms of animal life that lie in a hidden world “under the snow.”
Under the Snow was designated an NSTA/CBC Outstanding Science Trade Book for 2010 and a Bank Street College Best Book of the Year. It was cited by the 2010 Charlotte Zolotow Award Committee as a highly commended book. It was also a Massachusetts Book Award Finalist and a Junior Library Guild Selection.
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on 1/14/2011
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Queen of the Falls
By Chris Van Allsburg
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
$18.99
ISBN: 978-0-547-31581-2
Ages 4-9
On shelves April 4th
The word “daredevil” conjures up different images for different people. Speaking for myself, when I hear it I instantly picture someone like Evel Knievel leaping over cars on a motorcycle. I do not picture sixty-two year old charm school matrons climbing into barrels. The name “Chris Van Allsburg” also conjures up a variety of interesting images. A person might think of his books The Mysteries of Harris Burdick or The Sweetest Fig (or, my personal favorite, The Stranger). And until now, they also would probably not picture sixty-two year old charm school matrons climbing into barrels. Yet now both the word and the author/illustrator have become inextricably linked to one another, and it is all because of a little old lady who died nearly one hundred years ago. For the first time, Chris Van Allsburg has put aside the fantastical for something infinitely more intriguing: Real world history with just a touch of the insane. And it all begins with the first person to ever go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
The facts about the Niagara Falls are well known. “The water drops from a height that is as tall as a seventeen-story building.” Fact of the matter is, you’d have to be nutty to even consider going over such falls. Yet that was the idea that appealed so much to Ms. Annie Edson Taylor. A former charm school teacher, Annie was sixty-two years old and in real need of money. In a flash it came to her: Go over the edge of Niagara Falls in a barrel and reap the rewards that come. Efficient, Annie commissioned the barrel she would travel in, and found folks willing to help her carry out the plan. When the time came, everything went without a hitch and best of all Annie lived to tell the tale. Unfortunately, fame and fortune were not in the cards. Folks weren’t interested in hearing an old woman talk about her death-defying adventure, and on more than one occasion she found her barrel stolen or folks taking credit for her own deed. Ten years later a reporter found her and asked for her story again. Annie confessed that she didn’t become rich like she wanted to, but as she said, “That’s what everyone wonders when they see Niagara . . . How close will their courage let them get to it? Well, sir, you can’t get any closer than I got.”
This is not the first time I have encountered Ms. Taylor’s story. I’m a fan of the podcast Radio Lab, which makes science palatable to English majors like myself. One such podcast told the story of Annie Taylor, and it was a sad tale. So sad, in fact, that when I picked up Queen of the Falls I naturally assumed that Van Allsburg would sweeten, cushion, and otherwise obscure some of the difficulties Annie faced after her fateful trip. To my infinite delight, I found the man to be a sterling author of nonfiction for kids. He doesn’t pad the truth, but at the same time he finds that spark in a true-life story that gives it depth and meaning. On the surface, what could we possibly learn from the depressing reminder of
Being an only child, I never had to share my room or my home with siblings, and for the most part I liked having my own space. When I first moved to the States I had to share a house with five other people, and after a while I honestly thought I was going to lose my marbles. The only space I could call my own was a minuscule attic room that was boiling in summer and freezing in winter.
For today's picture book I have a story about a little rabbit who is thoroughly fed up with having to share his home with numerous brothers and sisters.
Elizabeth Baguley
Illustrated by Jane Chapman
Picture Book
Ages 3 to 6
Tiger Tales, 2008, 1-58925-074-5
Noah is a little rabbit, and every night he has to sleep in the family burrow with his many siblings. Every night he is “squished and squashed,” and every night his sister Ella holds him as if he were her teddy bear. One night Noah decides that he has had enough, and he goes outside into the fresh air.
Outside the burrow, Noah meets Albatross. He tells the sympathetic bird about his problems, and to make him feel a little less glum, the big bird tells Noah about “the land of the North Star.” When Noah expresses an interest in seeing a place where there are “no rabbits,” Albatross agrees to take him to see what the frozen North looks like. Neither one of them expects that this journey will help Noah to see his home life in a completely new way.
Children who are tired of not having their own space will immediately identify with Noah and his situation. With a heartwarming and thought-provoking story, and Jane Chapman’s wonderful illustrations, this is a picture book that will resonate with people of all kinds, big and small.
Crystal Hubbard first met Arthur Ashe when she was eight years old. Although she didn't play tennis, she eventually developed a love of the sport--one that prompted her to write this stunning biography of the first African American man to win a Grand Slam tournament.
Game, Set, Match, Champion Arthur Ashe
begins in the early 1950s when tennis facilities in Virginia were segregated. A young boy named Arthur used to watch one of the top black college tennis players practice and he watched him so much that the player, Ron Charity, eventually asked Arthur if he'd like to learn to play. When Arthur replied, "Yes, I would," I'm sure nobody expected what was to come.
Arthur started winning, and his confidence grew. By the time Arthur was ten, he was ready for more extensive coaching and he spent his summers at a tennis camp at the home of Dr. Robert Walter Johnson in Lynchburg, Virginia. By Arthur's senior year of high school, Arthur moved to St. Louis, so he could play tennis all year. He competed against top players and was one of the first to use the aggressive style that came to be known as "serve-and-volley." Arthur earned a scholarship to UCLA and won his first grand slam event in 1968.
At twenty-five, he was the number one player in the U.S. and the only elite black player. He then went on to have a grueling match against Jimmy Connors, the number one player in the world and defending Wimbledon Champ. But it was Arthur who defeated Connors, becoming the first African American man to win Wimbledon
This is a stunning portrait of a man who broke barriers in the tennis world. It teaches young readers not only about the life and perseverance of Arthur Ashe, but it also teaches them how wrong and hurtful it was to be separated because of one's race. The illustrations by Kevin Belford put readers right on the court as balls are certain to sail past them and an afterword and chronology of Ashe's life at the end stress how Ashe fought to overcome adversity and opened doors in his sport. A must have for any sports lover.
Read a Booktalk with Author, Crystal Hubbard
Additional Information:
Reading level: Ages 8-12
Hardcover: 48 pages
Publisher: Lee & Low Books (September 30, 2010)
ISBN-10: 1600603661
ISBN-13: 978-1600603662
Source of review copy: Publisher
Want to read an all-star of a story about the first woman inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame? She Loved Baseball: The Effa Manley Story
will have you inspired by the courage of one woman who was determined to fight for what was right.
When Effa was in first grade, she was scolded for playing with "those Negroes in the schoolyard." But "those negroes" were Effa's brothers and sisters. While Effa's skin was light, like her mother's, her siblings were dark and Effa was taught that discrimination was just the way things were.
But after high school, Effa moved to New York City and set out to live the big life she dreamed of. Effa enjoyed Yankee's games and met a kind, fun-loving man, Abe Manley who adored baseball. But when Effa went out on the town with Abe in Harlem, she realized that discrimination was still rampant as most businesses were owned by white people.
Effa, determined to change things, organized the Citizen's League for Fair Play, a group of community leaders who urged Harlem's largest department store to hire black salesclerks. Before long, hundreds of black people were working. Just as the business world was changing, so was the world of baseball. Abe and Effa married in 1935 and started a team in the new Negro National League. Effa had never organized schedules or ordered equipment, but Effa ended up handling almost all of the team's business. Most owners protested, stating that baseball was no place for a woman, but Effa persisted, fought for her players and became the first woman ever to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Audrey Vernick, the author of Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten?
, profiles an amazing woman who fought hard for what was right and proved that she loved baseball. Not only will young readers get an introduction to civil rights, Negro Leagues, and women's rights, they'll also be inspired that anyone can create change.
Additional Information:
Reading level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover: 32 pages
Publisher: Collins (October 19, 2010)
ISBN-10: 0061349208
ISBN-13: 978-0061349201
Source of review copy: Publisher
Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature
By Sarah C. Campbell
Photographs by Sarah C. Campbell and Richard P. Campbell
Boyds Mills Press
$17.95
ISBN: 978-1-59078-752-6
Ages 6 and up
On shelves now.
One of the more interesting requests I receive at my library’s reference desk comes from parents seeking math books for their kids. Generally speaking, they don’t want math textbooks or worksheets of math problems. No, they want books in a picture book format that incorporate math in some original manner. Now it is fortunate that there are a slew of such books out there. You can find them in any good children’s library if you know where to look and with the right teacher or parent, such books can make concepts like fractions or division or subtraction make perfect sense. Fibonacci numbers are a little trickier. Unlike addition or multiplication they are difficult to show to kids as having practical applications in real life. You could discuss how Fibonacci numbers apply to music, but that’s still tricky territory. Nature, however, is a natural complement. Kids understand flowers. Kids can understand duplicating numbers. Put the two together and you’ve the newest picture book format math book to add to your shelves. It does contain a couple difficult concepts, but with the right grown-up by their side, there’s very little in Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature that a child won’t be able to figure out on their own.
Take a look at these flowers and count the petals you see. One. Two. Three. Five. Eight. Notice anything? These petal numbers add on to one another. One plus two equals three. Two plus three equals five. These numbers are called Fibonacci numbers, and what’s crazy is that as they go they keep showing up in nature and it’s not just in flowers either. If you count spirals on pinecones or sunflowers or pineapples, no matter how you look at them they equal one of these numbers. With brilliant bright photography and simple words, Sarah and Richard Campbell make a math concept understandable. A section on “More About Fibonacci Numbers” and a Glossary of terms appear at the end.
It may sound as if this is a fairly simple and straightforward concept, but how do you write an entire book about duplicating numbers found in nature for youngsters? The Campbells have opted for starting out easy and getting slowly more complicated as the book goes on. So at the start the child reader is handed a really easy idea. They look at pictures and count the petals. By the time they get to the eight petals on the cosmos they learn about doubling the numbers and we see the same flowers all over again. Then the numbers get higher. The ideas get harder. It’s clear that some adult help may be needed to explain along the way.
I suppose the real question here is whether or not kids are gonna get all the concepts the book is throwing out. At the start it’s pretty clear but when it starts getting into counting the number of spirals, that’s when things begin to get wonky. You have to realize that spirals on pinecones and sunflowers and pineapples can go a variety of different ways. What would be fun is if grown-ups turn it into a game. What if you bought a pineapple and had the kids identify the spirals and then count them? That’s pretty cool. Of course then you start getting into the golden spiral concept and that gets kind of complicated. And, of course, if your child attempts to understand The Golden Ratio explanation at the end of the title, sign that kid up f
When I was growing up, I was given countless books full of fairy tales. I enjoyed the ones about dragons, monsters, ogres, witches, and wizards, but I really did not like the ones about princesses that much because the princesses in the stories were always so helpless and, to my mind, rather pathetic. These days there a quite a few books about princesses who are tough, brave, creative, and resourceful, and I am always on the lookout for princess stories with a twist. I was therefore delighted when the children's publicity manager at Sterling Books contacted me to tell me about Sterling's new princess book. Here is my review of the stunningly beautiful and very unique title.
Philippe Lechermeier
Illustrated by Rebecca Dautremer
Picture Book
Ages 10 and up
Sterling Books, 2010, 978-1-4027-6677-0
Many of you are experts on princesses. You have read about Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and all those other princesses who fill fairy tale books. You know all about princess fashion sense, and you know that the best way to be sure that a girl is indeed a princess is to ask her sleep on a pile of mattresses that has a pea under the bottom one. In short you are absolutely sure that you know all there is to know about princesses.
Unfortunately, you are wrong. There are lots of princesses stories that you have never even heard of. There are essential princess facts that you don't know.
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Here in AZ I am so ready for some weather that isn't summer :-)
Looks like an intriguing book. Thanks for the links to the Teacher's Guide.
I love butterflies! Thanks for sharing this, Lori. I'm with you, so not ready for winter to come!
Nice nice! I also lovelove butterflies - reminds me of fairies and elves and all things light and feathery. I was just thinking that if I were to feature this book, I'd probably pay a visit to our Changi Airport's butterfly garden and take a few photos myself.
Yes, we should hold on to summer as long as we could. :) Lucky for us, we have summer whole year round. :)
I'm SO jealous of you guys who live in AZ and all places warm! I'm not a winter person, so I need all the chances I can to keep channeling summer! =)