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Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizieliński (@hipopotam) started a revolution here in the UK, with the publication by Big Picture Press back in 2013 of their now famous Maps. With that beautifully produced book we started to see something of new departure for children’s non-fiction, with publishers realising that there was an appetite for gorgeously illustrated and finely produced information books which didn’t look or feel like school textbooks.

Since then we’ve seen several new non-fiction imprints established, dedicated to bringing us eye-catching, unusual and sumptuous non-fiction for children and young people, such as Wide Eyed Editions and 360 Degrees. This is great news, especially for younger children who report choosing to read non-fiction (42% of 7-11 year olds) almost as much as they do fiction (48.2% of 7-11 year olds, source), though you’d never guess this from the imbalance in titles published and reviewed.

It’s wonderful to see the return of the founders of the non-fiction revolution with a new title, Under Earth, Under Water, a substantial and wide-ranging exploration of what lies beneath the surface of the globe.

Split into two halves, allowing you to start from either end of the book by turning it around to explore either what lies beneath the earth, or under the oceans, this compendium of startling facts and quirky, fresh illustrations makes the most of its large format (a double page spread almost extends to A2), with great visual and verbal detail to pour over and a real sense of going down, down, down across the expanse of the pages.

The Earth pages cover everything from burrowing creatures to plant life in the soil, via extracting natural resources to industrial underground infrastructure. Tunnels, caves, digging up fossils and plate tectonics are all included in this rich and varied buffet brought together though a simple concept – simply exploring what is underneath our feet.

The Water pages explore aquatic life right from the surface down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, ocean geography, human exploration with the aid of diving equipment, the history of submarines and even shipwrecks.

Lavishly produced, with gorgeously thick paper it is a delight to hold this book in your hands. Wonderful design, featuring lots of natural reds and browns in the Earth section and soothing shades of blues and green in the Water section, ensures exploring the diverse content is a visual treat as much as it is a spark for thinking about the world around us in new ways.

My only question mark over Under Earth, Under Water is the lack of an index. Maybe this makes it more like a box of treasures to rummage in and linger over, the sort of space where you can’t be sure what gems you’ll dig up. Although perhaps not a resource from which to clinically extract information, Under Earth, Under Water offers a great deal to explore and a very enjoyable journey to the centre of the earth.

There’s so much we could have “played” in Under Earth, Under Water. We toyed with making submarines, visiting caves, planting seeds to watch roots grow, but in the end the animal burrows won out, and we decided it was time to make our own. This began with papier mache and balloons…

…which when dry were set into a cardboard box frame, and surrounded by layers of “soil” i.e. different coloured felt, to recreate the layering of different soil and rock types.

Then the burrows needed filling! Sylvanian families came to the rescue, along with nature treasures gathered from the garden.

And soon we had a dollshouse with a difference! (Can you spot the bones and other archaeological finds waiting to be dug up from the soil??)

Whilst making our underground burrow we listened to:

Other activities which might work well alongside reading Under Earth, Under Water include:

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Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of this book by the publisher, Big Picture Press. The book was translated by Antonia Lloyd Jones although she is not credited in the book.

Construction trucks. School buses. Airplanes. You name it, kids can’t get enough of it. Here are a few of our favorite books of Things That Go ... Read the rest of this post

We really enjoyed this tale about various construction vehicles and the job they do.  Each vehicle describes their function and then happily sings a song set to the tune of “London Bridge” about their work.  At the end they all sing together about how they work as a team to get the job done.  Great message for young children about having a positive attitude and teamwork.  You can purchase this ebook for $2.99 at Amazon or get it for FREE using Kindle Unlimited which is a new subscription service by Amazon to read up to ten books at a time for a monthly fee of $9.99.  They are currently offering free 30-day trials if you want to check it out.  As always all of our children’s books are available in the Kindle Unlimited program as well.

**We received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**

One of the best days of our school summer holiday this year was spent taking things apart and weaving other things together.

Two friends of mine are the driving force behind setting up an alternative, creative play space in my home town, and I was honoured to be a part of the team involved in testing a prototype of their PLAYLAB. The longer term project is all about taking play seriously, providing a wide range of fun opportunities to grow and develop, through engineering, digital, drama, art, and tinkering-based activities, and for one day during the summer we took over an empty shop in the local mall and turned it into a hive full of transformers and loom bandits.

Photo: Stuart Parker

We had a range of old machines to take apart with hand tools, to explore, rebuild and repurpose and a sweetie shop array of loom bands for weaving and creating.

Image: Joyjit Sarker

Image: Stuart Parker

There were also books! Books on the theory of play and practical books to inspire kids and families. One of my roles was setting up this mini tinkering/play-themed library and today I thought I’d share some of them with you. Whilst these aren’t kids’ books per se, they are definitely family books – books to share and inspire kids and their grown ups to be creative.

Cool Tools: A Catalog of possibilities by Kevin Kelly is a bizarre but ultimately enticing and fascinating curation of reviews of stuff that enable you to do, create, and explore your world.

At first I baulked at a book that essentially seemed to be a collection of themed adverts covering everything from shoes to spirituality, Velcro to vagabonding, joinery to geology; each reviews has a product photo, details of where to buy the product and the typical price of the item, followed by a review of the “tool” at hand.

But as I browsed this book (although its size and format – larger than A4 and printed on thin glossy paper – make it slightly unwieldy, this is a great book for dipping in and out of) I got sucked in and ideas for all sorts of play and creativity started flowing.

And that’s what this book sis really all about: Showing you some interesting, practical tools (both physical and digital) to enable you to see possibilities where perhaps you saw none before. It’s sparked lots of “what if?” conversations in our family, and amazed us with the range of innovative ideas out there.

On the back cover of Cool Tools it states “This book was made with the young in mind. Give a copy to a kid you know.” M (at 9) has loved this books though some families may wish to know in advance that there is a small section on ‘Psychedelics’ including marijuana, and e-cigarettes. Given the format of this book, the page concerned can easily be removed and its presence should certainly not be a barrier to you opening this book up and exploring all the possibilities it offers you.

The Art of Tinkering by Karen Wilkinson and Mike Petrich has one of the best front covers I’ve ever seen. It embodies what the book is about int he most perfect way possible: It is printed with conductive ink, allowing you to play/tinker/hack the book before you’ve even opened it.

Where Cool Tools was about products to foster doing/playing/tinkering, The Art of Tinkering is about showcasing a wide range of artists mixing technology and art, taking apart and repurposing one thing to make something exciting and new. After each artist is introduced there’s a section on “how you can tinker” in a way similar to the artist in question. Some of the suggestions need rather more equipment than just a screwdriver, glue or paint, but the ideas are innovative and inspirational, ranging from time lapse art to playdoh circuits, animating stuffed toys to sculpting in cardboard, building your own stroboscope to making clothes out of unusual materials. Whilst the book doesn’t include step by step tutorials, it is packed with practical information, presented beautifully. Nearly every page turn has resulted in “Mum, can we try that?!”

Tinkerlab by Rachelle Doorley is a compendium of “55 playful experiments that encourage tinkering, curiosity and creative thinking”, born out of the US blog with the same name, Tinkerlab. Written specifically with the 0-6 year old crowd in mind, the projects in this book are simpler and easier to set up than in some of the other books mentioned here today, and many fall into the messy play category; you might not think of them as tinkering (for example collage painting and drawing games), and yet they do all involve experimenting, exploring, testing and playing, and in that sense they could be described as ‘tinkering’. “Design”, “Build”, “Concoct” and “Discover” form the main themes of each chapter packed with clear, recipe-like guidance for the themed activities. The book is beautifully produced with a coffee table book feel and the activities are contextualised with brief essays by various play and education professionals. It’s written very much with parents in mind; Doorley is keen to encourage us all at home to make space for mess and exploration, and this book helps make it feel possible, manageable and enjoyable.

Make: is a quarterly magazine made up of a mixture of opinion pieces, detailed tutorials and artist/project biographies and write-ups. I’d gift this mind-boggling magazine to teens (or adults) who love the idea of playing and creating with technology. The projects are aimed at those who embrace electronics and gadgets and range from the practical (eg a DIY blood pressure monitor or sleep timer) to the purely whimsical, (eg moving, fire breathing sculptures or coffee shop construction toys).

Even though most of the projects in Make: are too complex for the stage me and my girls are at, we’ve oohed and ahhed our way through several issues of Make: and will be looking out for new issues.

If tinkering/hacking is something that interests you, do look out for this year’s series of Christmas Lectures from the Royal Institution. “Sparks will fly: How to hack your home” is the title for this year’s series of lectures aimed at curious kids and their families and in them Professor Danielle George will be exploring how the spark of your imagination and some twenty first century tinkering can change the world. They will be shown on BBC4 over the Christmas period, and in January 2015 on the Ri’s (free) science video channel: www.richannel.org.

Enter to win an autographed copy of Mighty Dads, story by award-winning author Joan Holub and illustrations by James Dean, creator of the bestselling "Pete the Cat" books. Giveaway begins April 15, 2014, at 12:01 A.M. PST and ends May 14, 2014, at 11:59 P.M. PST.

The last couple of weeks on the blog have really reminded me how books can take you everywhere and anywhere. From “pink” books, to the Holocaust, to environmental campaigning, I do love the journey my blog takes me on.

Today’s roving brings us to contemplate engineering and what constitutes failure, with Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts, a follow up to this same team’s ingenious Iggy Peck, Architect.

Rosie dreams of being an engineer. She loves collecting rubbish and creating contraptions. But people laugh at her creations and her emerging confidence is soon crushed. When Great Great Aunt Rose tells young Rosie how she built aeroplanes during the war, Rosie is once again inspired. But will Rosie’s engineering work this time? What if her plans fail?

An upbeat rhyming tale about the value of trying and trying again, Rosie Revere, Engineer encourages readers to hold on to their passions, and to never give up, even if things don’t work out the first time. Great for encouraging a can-do approach to whatever life throws at you, Rosie’s tale also leads naturally into discussions about women’s roles during the Second World War, and women who have broken the mould in various fields, notably that of flight.

Rosie is creative, thoughtful, passionate, full of a sense of fun, and with more than a nod to Rosie the Riveter, not least with her matching headscarf, and the slogan “We Can Do It” on her flying machine.

Roberts’ illustrations are a scrapheap challenge (junkyard ward) junkie’s dream come true. Littered with curious details to pore over (can you spot a Wild Thing, or follow the unwritten story of the baby bird?) the colours are bright and pen drawings clear. Often on expanses of white, Roberts’ work is vibrant, crisp and fresh, perfectly matching the confident and purposeful message at the heart of the book.

There is a decidedly American flavour to the text (some rhymes, I assume, work better with certain US accents than my UK one, and cheese spray may seem rather mind boggling to many on this side of the pond) so a little contextualisation might be handy, but my young engineers didn’t bat an eyelid at this. They were simply delighted by this Rosie and her take on life. Spunky, funky and full of fun and inspiration, three cheers for Rosie Revere!

To go alongside reading Rosie Revere, Engineer I set up a little after-school structural engineering project involving essential tools of the trade: tooth picks and sweets.

The aim of the game was to see what we could build and how we could build it using just these two materials, plus some imagination, and a little bit of concentration…

Space rockets and climbing frames soon rose from the kitchen table.

A spider’s web of construction emerged, with lots of experimental investigation as to what made our feats of engineering stand strong.

We also got to explore the roles of different materials, as we quickly discovered that most dolly mixtures aren’t very good for this type of project, whilst mini wine gums and gum drops are excellent. (If you want to go for just one, the wine gums are a better bet as they are less messy; the gum drops litter the kitchen table with sugar sprinkles, and also make fingers stickier).

We all thoroughly enjoyed this engineering project, and M is very keen to try it again soon to model chemical compound structure (her idea!); different sweets for different elements? Definitely sounds fun to me.

Whilst designing, engineering and building we listened to some brilliant music:

Other activities which would be great fun to get up to alongside reading Rosie Revere, Engineer include:

Don’t miss the teacher’s guide to Rosie Revere either.

What are you going to engineer today?

Disclosure: I recieved a free reivew copy of Rosie Revere, Engineer from the publishers.

5 Stars Geronimo Stilton #11: We'll Always Have Paris Lewis Trondheim Nanette McGuinness Papercutz 56 Pages    Ages: 7 and up .......................... .................................... Back Cover:  Geronimo Stilton is the editor of the Rodent’s Gazette, the most famous paper on Mouse Island. In his free time he loves to tell fun, happy stories. In this adventure, Geronimo [...]

If I were to ask you who was the inventor of human flight, how would you answer? Would you rack your brain for school memories and then come up with the Wright brothers? Would you be surprised and interested if you then found out that perhaps it wasn’t the Wright brothers after all, but someone else entirely?

The Fabulous Flying Machines of Alberto Santos-Dumont by Victoria Griffith, illustrated by Eva Montanari is one of the most enjoyable nonfiction picture books I’ve read this year and it tells the story of one Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian living in Paris at the turn of the 20th century, who, it turns out, has a very good claim on being the inventor of the airplane.

Alberto Santos-Dumont, inspired by a childhood passion for Jules Vernes, was crazy about inventing flying machines. He was famous across Paris for his preferred mode of city transport – his own private airship, a dirigible, which he used like an airborne taxi to take him to cafes and shops around town. But like many inventors Santos-Dumont didn’t sit still; he was knew “even the best inventions can be improved” and so he set about designing an airplane.

One chilly morning in November 1906, on the outskirts of Paris, Santos-Dumont promised to make the world’s first public airplane flight. Things didn’t get off to a good start when a rival would-be pilot turned up with his own airplane. But when this plane failed to make it off the ground, it was Santos-Dumont’s turn….

And he was off! Although he flew for barely more than 20 seconds, Santos-Dumont became the first person to lift off and land a completely self-propelled plane. Santos-Dumont was of course delighted: “these machines will mean the end of all wars. Once people are able to fly to different countries, they will see how much we have in common. We will all be friends.”

Victoria Griffith must have been jumping with delight as she gradually learned about Alberto Santos-Dumont; what better hero for a story could there be? He was a larger-than-life gentleman (he gave away most of the money he earned for his inventions), an eccentric, he played an important role in a world changing invention and he left a lasting legacy that you may well have heard of, even if you didn’t associate it with Alberto or had never knowingly heard his name before (there’s a clue in the picture below, but I’ll leave it for you to read the book to enjoy the story associated with it!)

Now it’s one thing to unearth a great story waiting to be told, but it’s quite another to weave it all together to create a narrative that grabs you from the outset, captures your imagination and makes you want to know more about the facts in question. Griffith does all of this perfectly, showing us a very important scientific truth along the way – that facts are often far more complicated than the received wisdom about them.

Eva Montanari’s illustrations, with e

Walking over the Brooklyn Bridge is a classic New York City experience. A truly iconic structure, it is first suspension bridge built in the United States. It's hard to imagine a time when the only way to get from Brooklyn to Manhattan was by boat!

April Jones Prince's Twenty-One Elephants and Still Standing takes us back in time to when the Brooklyn Bridge was built and people worried about its safety. Prince bases her story on an actual event: in 1884 P. T. Barnum decided to demonstrate his confidence in the bridge by marching his precious circus elephants across it. Prince's story is more informative than creative, but the light-handed text written in a free-style poetic form is still likely to hold children's attention during read-alouds.

Francois Roca's illustrations felt grand, but I was left wanting more from them. However, there are some interesting views of the bridge. I like the spread of the to-be-completed bridge spanning across the river above steamboats and sailboats. An author's note gives a bit of information about the real story.

If you like bridges and circuses this book is worth a look, but get it from the library.

Want More?
Read another picture book on the same subject: Twenty-One Elephants (my review coming soon!)
Visit the author's website.

Big Kid says: Do the elephants ever go across the bridge now? [Nope, now they go through the Midtown Tunnel!]

Word play is something we all enjoy in our home – whether it is J making up rhyming nonsense words or me making a terrible joke based around the multiple meanings of a given word (what my husband calls “a Zoe joke”). Unsurprisingly, books that play on words are also favourites, and a recent discovery for us that we’ve really enjoyed is Word Builder by Ann Whitford Paul, illustrated by Kurt Cyrus.

Photo: extranoise

With just a single sentence or phrase per page, accompanied by outsized illustrations on a grand scale Word Builder instructs its reader on the steps needed to construct first words and sentences before moving on to paragraphs and chapters, ultimately leading to the creation of a whole book.

Begin your new construction
with twenty-six letters.

Hammer a through z into words.

Pile your words like blocks
into sentence towers -

measure some tall,
saw others short.

This is no dry reference book, but instead something like a poem. The use of the imperative gives the text and immediacy; the reader/listener is directly addressed, making it seem like the story has been written for them alone – a great device for engaging little people in the perhaps otherwise somewhat (potentially) dull subject of composition.

The large scale illustrations showing the construction process, with giant letters mortared and buttressed together, all overseen by a young yellow-helmeted boy are exciting; the sometimes unexpected perspectives on the building process are thrilling. All in all, an interesting example of a picture book great for those already at school rather than pre-schoolers, a super book for those interested in words, for children beginning to write and for anyone who loves a good digger, crane or bulldozer!

Having read Word Builder we set straight to constructing some sentences, paragraphs and word cities of our own. Inspired by this post from Letter Soup, and this post from Filth Wizardry I picked up a bag of construction blocks from a charity shop. M and I prepared stickers with various words on them: M chose many of the words herself and then I wrote them on the stickers before both girls stuck them on the blocks ready to start building with.

As the building blocks we had came in a lot of different colours I chose to use one colour for e

Stylized 3D illustration about the engineer of the future.

More at Sevensheaven.nl

Stylized 3D illustration about the engineer of the future.

More at Sevensheaven.nl