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There are some books which, the moment you see them, invite you to open them. The opening is accompianied by appreciative murmurs, and thoughts of gift giving. Lost Worlds, by John Howe (Kingfisher, 2009, older middle grade on up, 95 pp), is just such a book. Mysterious looking. Engaging. Alluring. And with great content inside!

Today's Non-Fiction Monday is at Tales from the Rushmore Kid.

In my mind, the DK brand of non-fiction is synonymous with beautifully designed and copiously illustrated packages of information, ranging from the intricately particular to the more general. That pretty much sums up the Children's Book of Art, released this September. This book takes the reader on a chronological journey that explores art, in all its myriad forms, from cave paintings to graffiti.

There are sections on particular cultures, such as Dreamtime art, Chinese art, and African sculpture. There are sections on particular artists, dominated by many of the standard European heavyweights like Van Gogh and Picasso, but including some artists who were new to me--like Australian artist Sidney Nolan and the English artist Damien Hirst. There are sections that explore themes, like "Gods and heroes in art" and "Work in art."

And there are sections, which I found particularly fascinating, on how to make art oneself. Some tips and techniques I can imagine trying out with my own children (ideas from the section of watercolor, for instance) and others that might be a bit beyond us (how to make blue pigment from grinding lapis lazuli, and how to carve marble) that nevertheless make for engrossing reading.

I was a little saddened by the paucity of women artists (Mary Cassatt gets a double spread, and I noticed that some women are mentioned in the section on Naive art, a few more in Postwar Abstract art, and one in Abstract sculpture; I might have missed others). But, of course, the dominance of men isn't exactly DK's fault...

And I would have liked more anthropological elaboration, with global examples, on the lightly touched on point that art "can also be a meaningful idea" (page 9). I don't think this is explored enough, but then, I'm an anthropologist myself, and this is the part of art I find most fascinating.

But still. This is a lovely, fact-filled, pretty diverse look at art. It's a book that would make a great addition to the library of any young art lover (or art-lover-to-be).

Here are some other reviews, at Five Minutes for Books and 100 Scope Notes. And, in the interests of full disclosure, I received my copy from the publisher.

Today's Non-fiction Monday is hosted by Abby (the) Librarian.

A Guide to Fantasy Literature: Thoughts on Stories of Wonder and Enchantment, by Philip Martin (Crickhollow Books, Second Edition 2009, 144 pages, which includes bibliography and index).

"The goal of this book, " says Philip Martin in his introduction, "is to help you better appreciate fantastic stories of all sorts" (page 8).

So not me, exactly--I already appreciate fantasy just fine. His audience is those at the beginning of their journey into fantasy, and for these readers he offers a written gallery tour of the aspects of fantasy writing that set it apart from other genres. It is not a list of the best fantasy books, although many great books (some of which might come a surprise to those with a narrow view of the genre) are mined for examples. This is a book about the tropes of fantasy--the familiar patterns, places, characters and plots that one might encounter on a fairly regular basis.

For the reader who is already well-versed in fantasy, Martin offers no surprising insights.
"My role," he says in his afterword, "mostly has been to assemble a lot of ideas in one place and to try to provide a helpful organization structure" (page 138). And many of the ideas showcased here are from the great thinkers about writing fantasy. Some I was familiar with (Le Guin, Tolkien) other authors were known to me only through their fiction, and it was a delight to meet them in a non-fiction context (Elizabeth Hand, Peter Beagle, Steven King). It is easy to imagine this assemblage of diverse thoughts leading further in to deeper reader.

In many ways, this book is the beginning of a conversation, where the reader is invited to think about topic x, y, or z, as if for the first time. I think it would best for younger readers, perhaps high school students who dream of becoming writers. For such an audience, not used to breaking books into bits, this would be a valuable place to start. And I think the heavy use of older works of fantasy for examples might tease new readers of fantasy into exploring some foundation stones of the genre.

But I'm a tad uncertain that this younger reader I've created as the ideal audience for the book, because Martin assumes that his readers will be bringing considerable literary erudition to the table. For example, in the section entitled "Premonitions & Prophecies" is the following:

"Readers and the characters themselves are challenged to ponder the meaning of these advance signs. Will Birnam Wood travel to Dunsinane Hill? Unlikely, we think. Can a man not be born of woman and yet come to harm Macbeth? Seems like an impossibility" (page 80).

So that young, would-be writer of fantasy I imagine reading the book should, at the very least, not mind bits of not knowing, not mind that in this swirl of great books and great writers, there are things that might not make sense at the moment.

"Readers," Martin observes, "will tend to identify with the character who knows the least about what will happen in a book; they share this state, trying to understand any new or puzzling event with meager clues" (page 105).

A Guide to Fantasy Literature offers a generous collection of clues, but it is, in the end, simply a series of first steps into a much larger discussion....

which continues at Martin's website.

The Non-Fiction Monday Roundup is at Moms Inspire Learning today!

Lerner has a handsome new middle-grade non-fiction series in their Fall list--the Fantasy Chronicles. I've read two--Fairies and Elves, and Fantastical Creatures and Magical Beasts, both by Shannon Knudsen (both on sale now, but published as 2010).

Fairies and Elves (48pp, with index, bibliography, and suggestions for further reading/watching) is a history of European fairies, from the middle ages to the present day (there's just one paragraph on fairies around the world), exploring their dual nature as helpful friend and tricksy foe. This history of the Good Neighbors is liberally leavened with fairy tales-- both classics, like The Elves and the Shoemaker, and more obscure stories (primarily from the British Isles), that illustrate the wide variety of fairies that have populated the pre-mental landscape. Knudsen, in a chatty, companionable way, discusses how beliefs in creatures like this might have helped explain the unexplainable, and how this way of thinking faded:

"A funny thing happened to fairies and elves during the late 1800s. The stories that people had told and believed in for hundreds of years no longer seemed true to most folks. Science and technology had changed the way they lived and viewed the world. Before, for example, parents might have blamed a child's sickness on fairy magic. But in this new era, they were more likely to listen to a doctor's medical explanation" (pages 28-29).

The book brings the history of fairies and elves right up to the present, with the final chapter ("Entertaining Elves") discussing their modern incarnations in icons of popular culture such as the Lord of the Rings movie, Harry Potter, and World of Warcraft. I think this is one of the great strengths of the book--kids who are familiar with these fairies/elves may well find their back story very relevant (so it's almost a pity this chapter wasn't put at the beginning, as a hook!).

Fantastical Creatures and Magical Beasts (48 pages, also with back matter), is also dominated by European monsters (10 pages all about Greece, 10 pages on all the rest of the world), which is a pity, because there's not that much out there on, say, the mythological creatures of Oceania (maybe, Lerner, you could do a whole region by region series on magical beasts? I promise I'd read them to my children...). But the monster stories in this book are told with zest, and, as is the case with Fairies and Elves, Knudsen adds interest, and food for further thought, in her discussion of the function stories of fantastical creatures might play in ways of making sense of the world. Being an anthropologist, I found the functionalist approach a bit of an over-simplification, but it was great to see the subject pushed beyond a simple cataloguing of the fantastical. This book also brings its topic into the present--the last picture shows two boys showing off their Pokemon cards.

Both books are written in a friendly, story-telling fashion (my nine-year old, who serves as my benchmark, read them both with ease and enjoyment), and both are copiously illustrated with (primarily) original material (such as Greek vases, Indian sculpture, and Disney's Tinkerbell).

The other books in the series are Giants, Trolls, and Ogres, Mermaids and Mermen, and Wizards and Witches, and later today I shall ask the children's librarian at our library if the Friends could perhaps buy them...*

Non-fiction Monday is at Simply Science today.

(review copies received from the publisher)

* random aside on fundraising: the Decorative Gourd Fundraiser, in which I sell decorative gourds that I have grown, will not bring in much this year, due to rotten weather, likewise the Zucchini Fundraiser (one zucchini to date, and how sad is that), but perhaps I will have enough corn for a Corn Fundraiser (the corn is almost ripe, and has done very well), unless my children decide they really like corn. Pity no-one wants to pay for crab grass.

Did you know that elephants in India have been trained to carry cameras into the jungle? Because elephants and Bengal tigers are used to sharing their habitat, the elephants were able to get unparalleled pictures of the rarely photographed cats.

Did you know that mooses' antlers act as hearing aids?

That a mother duck, after her babies were swept down a storm drain, followed the sound of their desperate peeping more than mile above ground? (I think this would be a great picture book).

These are a few of the very diverting things I read about about on my bus ride home yesterday. An all new Ripley's Believe It or Not book had arrived--Seeing is Believing (Ripley, 2009), and it added much enjoyment to my commute. As the examples above show, I was especially fascinated by the section on animals (less ethically problematic for me than the section on human curiosities), but the book contains a wealth of curious and eyebrow-raising snippets about a wide range of subjects--extreme earth, incredible feats, travel tales, amazing science, and strange sites, to name a few chapter headings. It's copiously illustrated, and the bullet format of the entries makes it easy to dip into in a relaxed way.

This sort of information is fun to read for its own sake, and the non-fiction loving middle grade kid should find much to enjoy here. But (bringing this into my blog's topic) the subject matter of this book can also serves as a springboard to the imagination--many of the tidbits of fact seem like things out of fantasy or science fiction, and many entries would make great story prompts for young writers creating their own unbelievable stories.

I'd advise some parental discretion--there are some pretty disturbing stories and pictures here, that verge on nightmarish--an x-ray of a kitten swallowed by a snake, some of the strange things people do themselves, human sideshows (baby ducks crying for their mama....it doesn't actually say that the mother ever found her babies, and I'm a bit afraid she never did). That being said, an older kid could conceivability spend hours pouring over this, learning and marvelling and shuddering over the almost unbelievable things this book offers. And is rather appealing as well to some of us older readers, who might sometimes procrastinate a bit too enthusiastically by reading odd news on line...I always click on links to articles about two-headed chickens.

(review copy received from the publisher)

For our recent train trip from Providence, RI to Washington D.C., I packed an enticing selection of books with which to entertain the boys. The winner, for most times read (coming and going) and depth of interest sustained, was Fluorine (Tom Jackson, 2004), one of a series called The Elements published by Benchmark Books (Marshall Cavendish). We poured over the diagram showing what happens when fluorine gas is added to uranium tetrafloride, were intrigued to learn that fluorine might become an ingrediant in artificial blood (sounds risky), and studied, as is our wont, the Periodic Table of Elements.

Being less scientifically minded than I might be, I posed challenging questions along the lines of "If you were an element, which element would you like to be?" I want to be one of the Nobel Gases, possibly Argon, in as much as I'm an introvert and don't react with others as much as more extroverted elements. Fluorine, for instance, is an incredibly pushy element--"It gets the girls," said my son, which led to a brisk discussion on the dangers of metaphors that incorporate gender stereotypes. And anyway, "Fluorine" sounds like a girl's name to me.

The Elements is a a fine series for non-fiction loving children, with human interest galore alongside the straight chemistry. It was not my idea to start checking them out, but my 8 year old has always had a passion for chemistry, and my 6 year old is happy to go along for the ride, so there we are (one of their most bitter public fights occurred at a library booksale, when they were 5 and 2, and both wanted a chemistry textbook--one because it was chemistry, the other because it was red). We are now reading Gold.

I feel very lucky to have children who like to learn, because it means I get to learn too, and no one is more aware of how much I don't know than I myself. The depth of my chemical ignorance was made clear to me when I first read The Uplift War, by David Brin, many years ago. In this book (an excellent story, incidentally), an "uplifted" female chimpanzee, who isn't considered especially intelligent or worthy of reproduction, manages to recognize the chemical formula for hemoglobin--C738H1166N812O203S2Fe--and saves the day. Not me. I can do H2O and CO2, but that's about it. I vaguely wonder if one reason I like fantasy better than science fiction is that it takes a lot more technological and scientific know-how to succeed as a science fiction character...Sigh. But if we keep on checking those element books out of the library, perhaps my children will be spared their mother's shame.

The Non-fiction Monday Roundup is at In Need of Chocolate today!

Welcome to today's Non-Fiction Monday! Please leave your link in the comments, and I'll add them throughout the day.

Here's mine.
A long time ago, deep in the wild woods of northern RI, I was out looking for an archaeological site that I had heard of once. I didn't find it, but I did find a treasure--a lovely, cleanly sunbleached skunk skull. My youngest boy took it to his heart, and wanted to take it to his bed instead of a stuffed animal, but really, there are limits. Sadly, skunk skull is no longer with us. It probably fell out of the car at some point. And it is still missed.

But last week, the husband of a co-worker was out on a construction site, and found us a new skull! Clean and beautiful. (A picture will be added soon).

I offered it to my son..."SKULL!!!!!!!!" he cried, in total rapture.

If anyone finds any clean small mammal skulls, please think of us. We have room for more.

The best skull book for children (not that there are many to choose from) is The Skull Alphabet Book, by Jerry Pallotta, illustrated by Ralph Masiello. It is a clever and cunning book--they don't tell you what the animal is whose skull is pictured! You have to figure it out, based on a fun mix of visual and verbal clues. The visual clues come not just from the bones themselves, but from the amusing backdrops against which they are painted. for instance, C is for cat, and the cat's skull is posed outside a mousehole, next to a mousetrap. This makes it fun for little skull lovers like my boy (he's loved this since he was three), but also good for older kids who might be more interested in the variation of the bones themselves. And it's an excellent introduction to paleontology, even though the skulls are all from animals who are still with us, because palaeontologists have to learn to spot and interpret clues from the bones in much the same way.

So, if you are reading this after I have put up my own skull picture, can you guess what animal this is?

Some non-fiction books are best read out loud to wide-awake children--the sort of books with lots of sidebars, jammed packed with information, color, and detail. Other non-fiction books work beautifully at bedtime--the sort of books where the non-fiction is presented in a coherent narrative, with the facts part of a story.

Narwhal Unicorn of the Sea (Smithsonian Oceanic Collection), by Janet Halfmann, illustrated by Steven James Petruccio (Soundprints, 2008, 32pp) falls into the later category. It tells of a baby narwhal, growing up in the cold arctic ocean, in clear prose with pleasantly detailed, yet unfussy, pictures. There's is danger in these waters, not just from predators, such as polar bears and killer whales, but from the ice itself. The narwhal pod becomes trapped in a small patch of open water by thick ice, and it's not clear that they ever be able to reach the open ocean. But instinct and luck save the day, and the young narwhal makes it to adulthood.

We've read and enjoyed other animal books by Janet Halfmann (about polar bears and alligators, and, my favorite, hermit crabs). If you have an animal-loving child, about five-years old, with an appetite for non-fiction, her books are the best I know of for peaceful, shared learning at the end of the day.

On the other hand, because of the narrative style of these books, without all those fact-packed sidebars, the curious adult reader might be left with questions. How, for instance, did the narwhals know the ice extended further than they could swim?

The Non-fiction Monday Roundup is at The Miss Rumphius Effect today!

Come to the Castle!: A Visit to a Castle in Thirteenth-Century England, by Linda Ashman, illustrated by S.D. Schindler (Roaring Brook Press, 2009), invites the reader to travel back in time to the late medieval ages, where the Earl of Daftwood is holding a grand fest.

What is pleasure for the earl, in his comfortable status as lord of the manor, is the opposite for those underneath him, and we see his servants (including the noble Privy Lord, the cook, the herald) scurrying to pull the party together. It isn't that much fun to be a knight, in an overheated tin can, either. But let the feast begin!

"Prepare the Great Hall-
The banquet's tonight!
Arrange the old trestles;
Drape them in white.

The goblets must sparkle,
The silver must shine.
Oh no, dear-don't wash them!
Some spit will do fine."

I've always had a penchant for the medieval, and so can't help but rave over the loveliness of the book design, illustrations, and illuminated initials that make this book a gorgeous physical object. It drew my boys to it instantly, and they were very taken with the pictures (full of detail) and they were very interested in the illuminated letters, which they had never seen before in a children's book (incidentally, these might be a challenge for the young independent reader, since they can be hard to figure out the first time through). And, of course, they were very taken with the illustration of the privy.

As the quote above illustrates, the book is told in verse. I was rather doubtful about this, because reading it to myself, the words seemed a tad forced. But reading it aloud to the boys, things moved much more swimmingly, and we enjoyed it a lot (although I never did fall quite in love with the words).

In short, a beautiful and educational book, great for reading aloud, and, I hope, inspiring young artists to draw their own more detailed fantastically medieval settings.

Here's another review, from Abby (the) Librarian, and a cool podcast at Just One More Book!

For more non-fiction books, visit the Non-Fiction Monday Roundup at Book Scoops!

Ocean Hide and Seek, by Jennifer Evans Kramer, illustrated by Gary R. Phillips (Sylvan Dell, 2009).

Imagine a book about sea creatures that, on the one hand, is a soothing sea creature book to read at bedtime, and which, on the other hand, serves as a springboard to discussions not just of the creatures but of the poetic subtleties of language. Such a book is this one.


With each beautifully illustrated pair of pages featuring a rhyming, repetitive verse about a single sea creature, this book appears at first a peaceful introduction to the ways in which ocean animals hide themselves:

"Clownfish colors, orange and white-
orange and white, orange and white.
Seeking shelter, taking flight,
clownfish hiding in plain sight."

This is the good-for-bed-time-reading side of this book.

But other verses are more challenging. Here's the octopus:

"Clever arms that dip and sway-
dip and sway, dip and sway.
Like deadly sea snakes seeking prey,
predators soon swim away."

Not so bed-timish, but a good springboard for discussion about what a predator is (although kids today seem to know this by the time they're three), and also about similes--which the grown-up might need to explain.

The grown-up planning to read this book aloud would be advised to read the pages at the end first. Here, in very straightforward prose, the ways in which the various creatures hide in the sea are explained. Even for an educated adult, this book has challenging bits on first read--it helps, for instance, to know in advance from reading the back that some parrotfish "make a clear, mucus "sleeping bag" cocoon at night." Otherwise, when the fish is described as "a queen in her cocoon," everyone is at sea (pun intended)

Speaking from experience with the various children I've tried this book on (four of them), older kids might not care for the repetitive poetry, and younger kids might be baffled by the poetic descriptions. There's not much one can do about the former, but I think that if the adult reader and the child have the patience to talk about the book in depth (this pun just happened) as they read it the first time through, they will learn a lot, and the book might well become a welcomed bed-time story on subsequent reads.

The Non-fiction Monday Roundup is at Lori Calabrese Writes!

Non-fiction Monday is here today--please leave a link to your post in the comments, and I'll add them to the list!




If you are looking for a truly great book about Leonardo da Vinci for a five to nine year old, here is our favorite-- Leonardo da Vinci by A. & M. Provensen. The Provensen's have taken Da Vinci's marvelous creativity and, with considerable creativity on their own parts, made it into a pop-up book. So the reader can, along with Leonardo, hoist a model of the church of San Giovanni up into the air, practice various flying contraptions ("By very good luck Zola was not hurt. Leonardo and his apprentices gave up flying for the time being"), turn the pages of Da Vinci's notebook (with varied detailed facsimiles of his drawings), and read a sentence of his disguised writing-- Evom ton seod nus eht. Da Vinci wrote from right to left, backward. It is great fun, and a beautiful introduction not just to Da Vinci but to Renaissance Italy.

Becky has a review of Duke Ellington His Life In Jazz.

Abbey has a little roundup of nonfiction titles she's read lately over at Abbey (the) Librarian

Tweet! Tweet! at Simply Science offers a fresh look at the United Tweets of America, with activities (and gosh how my five year old loves that book. Just saying "western meadowlark" to him cracks him up).

Tying in nicely with the tweets is this post at Chicken Spaghetti, where you can find "Wonders of America: Yellowstone."

A few days ago, Jo Walton over at Tor wrote a post called "Real world reading for fantasy writers," making the point that the more you know about the time and place on which you are basing your imaginary world, the better your world will be. One of her suggestions was to look at children's books- "Children’s non-fiction almost always has illustrations, which can be very useful, and it’s usually easy to read and lets you know what it is that you want to know, so you can approach the adult books from a point of less ignorance. Also, children are assumed to be more interested in the practical details of life—I have no idea why."

My own eight year-old child is fascinated by world building--drawing maps of imaginary places, and pictures of the temples and castles and weapons therein (with a heavy emphasis on the weapons). I would love to see him start putting details of this kind into his stories as he becomes a more competent writer.

So today I have been wondering what specific children's non-fiction books to put in a list both for adult fantasy writers and for children just beginning to discover the joys of writing stories that have material foundations in the past. And I am thinking that this might be a nice thing to start exploring on non-fiction Mondays, gradually leading to a lovely Book List.

A book that came quickly to mind was Viking Raiders (Time Traveler), an Usborne book. The edition I have, by Anne Civardi and James Graham-Campbell, illustrated by Stephen Cartwright, was published way back in 1977. It was revised and reissued in 2003.

This is the sort of book that is just downright enjoyable. It starts with a hook for young readers--you are asked to put on a magic helmet and travel back in time. Next, you meet all the Viking characters you will encounter in Viking times--their lives provide a story arc for the non-fiction. Then things get really cool, with a bird's eye view of Earl Knut's Farm, in the year 890 A.D--lots of little things to see, lots of labels hither and thither, busy people (actually, come to think of it, a bit like Richard Scarry). Next a cutaway of the longhouse, the building of a Viking ship, launching a raid, trading, immigrating to Iceland, and more...all with wonderfully detailed illustrations.

At the end, as a pièce de résistance, there is a map of the Viking world showing lots of little Vikings and Viking ships going all over the place. As a coda, there is a two page, more text-heavy, spread on "The Story of the Vikings"--straight up fact for those who want to learn more.

We really like this book in our house. I shall read it to the boys again tonight, and maybe we can all draw Viking settlements and dragon-prowed warships and swords and shields afterwards....

Anyone else have any favorite non-fiction Viking books, good for world-building purposes?

Today's Non-Fiction Monday roundup is here at Picture Book of the Day.

In last week's Nonfiction Monday post, I reviewed a rather lovely book about hermit crabs by Janet Halfmann. Very impressed by her writing, I was inspired to read to my children two of her other books (whose numbers are legion).

The first was Alligator at Saw Grass Road, illustrated by Lori Anzalone (2006, Smithsonian's Backyard). And, as was the case of the hermit crab book mentioned above, this was the best picture book about alligators that I have read (I have read at least three others. Probably more. It is a testimony to their mediocrity that I can't remember what they were). My 7 year old, dismissive at first, was soon engrossed in the story of an female alligator and her children (whom we meet first in the egg). My 5 year old, less jaded, was enthusiastic from the start.


The second was Polar Bear Horizon, illustrated by Adrian Chesterman (2006, Smithsonian Oceanic Collection), telling the story of a mother polar bear and her young cubs. Since I haven't, to the best of my knowledge and belief, read any other non-fiction books about polar bears, I can't make any sweeping statements about this one. But we enjoyed it (except that it looks like the illustrator drew goofy smiles on all the bears, which got on my nerves a bit. But maybe polar bears just naturally come with goofy smiles?).

Both of these books are narrative non-fiction, with none of those informational sidebars that are so distracting for the one reading out loud. Halfmann's writing is clear and relaxed; it is a pleasure to read. Both these books are part of an institutional series, but do not at all feel pushed out quickly to meet that institutions specific requirements. And both these books are packed full of information, and interesting little plot elements, and include more explicitly informational details and glossary at the end.

I can now say with confidence that Janet Halfmann is my favorite narrative non-fiction author. Disclosure: although I got these books from the publisher, they did not slip me anything extra to ensure a good review.

For more non-fiction kid's books, head over to the Nonfiction Monday book roundup!

Environmental Disasters, by Michael Woods and Mary B. Woods (Lerner 2008, 64pp). Part of the Disasters Up Close series, writen for Grade 5 and up.

This isn't cheerful reading, but it is darned interesting. Chemical leaks, killer smog, a vanishing sea, and the explosion of a nuclear reactor (among other disasters) are presented here in an utterly engrossing, horrifying, riveting way. The subject matter in itself is fascinating, but the authors have given the material a human touch that makes it unputdownable by bringing real people into it. Here's seven year old Barry Linton, for instance, talking about the Killer Smog that killed over 4,000 people in London in December, 1953- "Even in our...living room, it was misty and choky," Linton remembered. "And every time I blew my nose, it looked like soot in my hanky" (page 23). Aziza Sultan recalled the 1984 gas leak in Bhopal thus - "The room was filled with a white cloud....Each breath [seemed] as if I was breathing in fire" (page 29).

These oral testimonies of hellish situations are coupled with very clear descriptive prose, explaining with copious examples what environmental disasters are, what causes them, where they happen, and how their effects are measured. And it ends with a vague hope that we are, perhaps, learning enough from our mistakes that we will not all be doomed...

There are copious (and fascinating) illustrations, a list of safety tips, a timeline (I didn't know that Edward I made the first air pollution law in 1272 to reduce smog in London), a glossary, a list of Disaster Sites to visit (fun for the whole family?), source notes, and further resources.

This wasn't a book I felt I wanted to read to my children--they are still too young to know the horror that people can unleash, through carelessness, greed, and stupidity. But as a curious reader, I found this book a true page turner (and I bet a lot of kids will too). I think the Woods should write a book on the same subject for grownups, who need the lessons contained in these stories spelled out to them much more than today's children do, brought up as they are with Earth Day and Recycling.

This book was reviewed a few weeks ago by Diane Chen over at the School Library Journal, who was also taken with the Edward I trivia tidbit. It's already been featured at the Nonfiction Monday roundup, but certainly deserves another go!

Mass Extinction: Examining the Current Crisis, by Tricia Andryszewski (2008, Lerner, 111 pp, Grades 6-12).

Mass Extinction begins on an ominous note, describing the lost dogwoods of the Appalachians, and the sad plight of the hemlocks. A bit of a respite is provided in an overview of past great extinction crises--the Big Five. I enjoyed this part; it's safely in the past. But then Andryszewski begins to address her main subject--the extent to which humans are precipitating Big Six. And it looks grim. Chapters on altered and fragmented habitats, purposeful killing, invasive species, climate change, and toxins paint a deeply disturbing picture. The narrative is accompanied by side bars that include historical pictures and writing as well as photographs of living animals, adding depth and context.

This is not a cheerful book. It is beautiful written-- I read parts of it out loud, which I think is one of the best ways of finding flaws in prose, and found none to speak of. The vocabulary is simple, yet effectively used to convey complex information in a non-didactic way. It's well illustrated, and informative as all get out. But despite all this, it is not a pleasant reading experience, and I stopped reading it out loud to my older boy by the third chapter--much too depressing. And there's no comforting conclusion, no "if you turn off the lights when you aren't using them all will be well."

However, because this book is so matter of fact about the harm that has been done to the earth's ecosystems, and the consequences to us, its warning might be much more persuasive than some of the more evangelical environmental books out there.

This isn't one for young readers. Leafing through it with my children, I had to close it quickly when we got to the picture of the seven legged frog. There are things they are still to young to know, but the older readers, for whom this book is intended, should read and learn...and hopefully help.

One sidebar quotes Henry David Thoreau writing on extinction: "I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars. I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth." I, likewise, do not want my children to grow up in a rhinoceros-less, or even, heaven forbid, a frogless world.

On a positive note, I read today that the black footed ferrets had a successful breeding year in 2007--397 babies, and very cute they are.

(Disclaimer: I got my copy from the publisher)

Title: Bad Dog, Marley!

Written by: John Grogan

Illustrated by: Richard Cowdrey

Hardback: 40 pages

Ages: 3-8

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

ISBN: 978-0-06-117114-7

Publication: May 2007

If you have ever adopted a puppy, you will quickly relate to this cute story!

When Daddy came home with a cardboard box, Cassie and Baby Louie could not wait to see what was inside.

“In the box was a squiggly yellow furball with a wet black nose and ears so big and floppy, they look like he’d borrowed them from an elephant.”

Marley was the perfect addition to their happy family…. or so they though!

They soon learned that as Marley grew and grew, so did the size of the trouble he got into. No matter what Marley did, it always ended in “Bad dog, Marley!”

Marley eats what he shouldn’t eat, drinks what he shouldn’t drink, and chews what he shouldn’t chew. Marley even came home one day with a giant pair of underwear, to which Daddy replied, “I don’t even want to know.”

It was not until Marley came to Baby Louie’s rescue that the family realized that Marley was right where he belonged, and that bad, bad dog suddenly became “Good dog, Marley!”

Illustrator Richard Cowdrey’s realistic style is perfect for this book. You can actually feel the happiness, frustration and love the family has for Marley. The pictures are big and colorful and really bring this story to life.

Children will love to read this book over and over again!

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Reviewed by Amy Seim

Amy Seim is an aspiring children’s writer who already has several papers and abstracts published in the field of biology. Before becoming a stay-at-home mom, she received a BS in Biology and a MS in Environmental Science and taught science courses at a local community college and university. Amy hopes to use this knowledge to write exciting and educational science-based children’s books.