Sharing Wonder: April Pulley Sayre

Trout Are Made of Trees
We have been thinking about wonder—about the fascination we have for the beauty, the intricacy, the mystery of the workings of the natural world.

Planetarium

Planetarium
My fas­ci­na­tion with out­er space is well-doc­u­ment­ed. I had star charts on my child­hood bed­room walls. But this book would have enthralled me … in fact, it still does. The illus­tra­tions by engraver and print­mak­er Chris Wormell are detailed in a way that aids under­stand­ing. Scale is a tough con­cept for our com­pre­hen­sion but this book tack­les that with info­graph­ics that give a sense of how enor­mous our uni­verse is.
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Nomad Press

Nomad Press
Andi Diehn (pho­to: Bob Eddy) For teach­ers, par­ents and any­one look­ing for “school-at-home” non­fic­tion books, Nomad Press is an excel­lent resource for activ­i­ty-based non­fic­tion books. With Nomad’s infor­ma­tion­al series, stu­dents not only “read about” impor­tant top­ics of our times but also inves­ti­gate, “ask about” and “do about” these topics. First I tried out sev­er­al of their books. I found excel­lent infor­ma­tion com­bined with engag­ing activ­i­ties and chal­leng­ing ques­tions. 
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Science + History = Whole Picture”

Author Candice Ransom
On my “final” draft of Bones in the White House: Thomas Jefferson’s Mam­moth, I drew a line of lit­tle mastodons troop­ing across the bot­tom of the man­u­script pages. Each ani­mal bore a date that matched a side­bar fact or ref­er­enced the main text. I thought this was a clever way to remind read­ers of the march of time.  The first lit­tle mastodon (or “mam­moth,” as the crea­ture was called in Jefferson’s day) was labeled “700 mil­lion years ago,” the sec­ond “13,000 years ago,” the third “11,000 years ago,” inch­ing along like an Ice Age glac­i­er to the time peri­od of the sto­ry. … more

When the Meteorologist Writes the Weather Books

Sky Stirs Up Trouble: Tornadoes
It’s not often that we get to inter­view a sub­ject expert about a series of books on that expert’s area of knowl­edge. We’re pleased to talk with the author of the Bel the Weath­er Girl books, six of them, each pre­sent­ing a weath­er top­ic that kids will feel bet­ter about if they under­stand it: clouds, thun­der­storms, hail, tor­na­does, hur­ri­canes, and blizzards.… more

Explorer Academy: The Falcon’s Feather

Trudi Trueit
Explor­er Acad­e­my: The Fal­con’s Feather
Tru­di Trueit
illus­trat­ed by Scott Plumbe (with a blend of photos)
Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Part­ners, 2019
ISBN 978−1−4263−3304−0 I’ve writ­ten a pri­or Read­ing Ahead essay about my love for The Neb­u­la Secret, the first book in the Explor­er Acad­e­my series. Now book two, The Fal­con’s Feath­er, con­tin­ues the sto­ry and I think it’s even more excit­ing.… more

Make This!

Make This!
Make This! Build­ing, Think­ing, and Tin­ker­ing Projects for the Amaz­ing Mak­er in You 
Ella Schwartz, pho­tographs by Matthew Rakola
Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Kids, 2019 When pre­sent­ed with this book, wheels start turn­ing, ideas begin pop­ping, and your tem­per­a­ture ris­es! This is going to be fun. And a care­ful­ly thought-through learn­ing expe­ri­ence … but who needs to know that? By the book’s def­i­n­i­tion, “A mak­er is some­one who tin­kers, fix­es, breaks, rebuilds, and con­structs projects for the world around them.”… more

Curiouser and Curiouser with Melissa Stewart

Melissa Stewart
This month we’re fea­tur­ing Melis­sa Stew­art, author of sci­ence books for young read­ers and a seem­ing­ly tire­less advo­cate for read­ing non­fic­tion books, par­tic­u­lar­ly expos­i­to­ry non­fic­tion (“5 Kinds of Non­fic­tion”). Melis­sa has writ­ten more than 180 books in her career, the first of which was pub­lished in 1998 and the most recent of which is Pipsqueaks, Slow­pokes, and Stinkers: Cel­e­brat­ing Ani­mal Under­dogs (illus­trat­ed by Stephanie Laberis, pub­lished by Peachtree Pub­lish­ers).… more

Earth Day

Whether you are cel­e­brat­ing Earth Day this week or next week or every week, there are books here that will enchant your stu­dents or your fam­i­ly, open­ing up pos­si­bil­i­ties for good discussions.
  Earth: My First 4.54 Bil­lion Years
Sta­cy McAn­ul­ty, author
James Litch­field, illustrator
Hen­ry Holt, 2017
pri­ma­ry and ele­men­tary grades Told from the view­point of the anthro­po­mor­phic Earth itself, this book tells the life sto­ry of our home plan­et, intro­duc­ing it to “alien vis­i­tors.”
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A Science Rookie: Learning to Craft a Science Narrative When
You Know Next to Nothing about Science

Susan Latta
Enter the fresh­man chem­istry tutor dressed in torn jeans and a flan­nel shirt. His job? To get me through entry lev­el chem­istry at Iowa State Uni­ver­si­ty. My first col­lege plan was to major in Hotel and Restau­rant Man­age­ment because my father owned a com­pa­ny that did busi­ness with these types of insti­tu­tions. So, what the heck, I didn’t know what else to study so I declared that my major way back in the fall of 1977.… more

Feeding the Naturally Curious Brain

Science Encyclopedia
You’ll dis­cov­er mouth­less worms and walk­ing ferns … ” (pg. 13) And with those words, I’m charged up for the hunt. Along the way, I can’t help being dis­tract­ed by a sat­is­fy­ing amount of irre­sistible infor­ma­tion in Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s Sci­ence Ency­clo­pe­dia. If you learn best visu­al­ly, there is a sur­feit of images to stim­u­late a curi­ous mind. If you learn best ver­bal­ly, then this book is chock full of words arranged in the most inter­est­ing ways.… more

Everything You Need to Ace Five Subjects

Everything You Need to Ace Science in One Big Fat Notebook
I’ve had this TBR pile of five very attrac­tive, come-hith­er-look­ing books beg­ging to be rec­om­mend­ed for weeks now. The spines are bright pri­ma­ry col­ors so I know that even when I shelve them they will be call­ing to me. And I think they’ll be call­ing to your stu­dents as well. I open what are for me the two scari­est vol­umes (eat your veg­eta­bles first — oops, as an adult, I find I LOVE veg­eta­bles), Every­thing You Need to Know to Ace Sci­ence in One Fat Note­book: Notes Bor­rowed from the Smartest Kid in Class (Dou­ble-Checked by Award-Win­ning Teacher) and Every­thing You Need to Ace Math in One Big Fat Note­book: Notes Bor­rowed from the Smartest Kid in Class (Dou­ble-Checked by Award-Win­ning Teacher).… more

Skinny Dip with Pamela S. Turner

Pamela S. Turner
For this inter­view, we vis­it with Pamela S. Turn­er, chil­dren’s book author with two new books out in 2016, Samu­rai Ris­ing: The Epic Life of Minamo­to Yoshit­sune and Crow Smarts: Inside the Brain of the World’s Bright­est Bird: Which celebrity, living or not, do you wish would invite you to a coffee shop?
Sir Richard Francis Burton, the Victorian anthropologist, translator, linguist, and African explorer.… more

Books Like This Are Convincing

Lives of the Scientists
I’m more com­fort­able with mag­ic than I am with sci­ence. Mar­ried to a sci­ence guy, I work hard­er to be inter­est­ed in sci­ence. It gives us some­thing to talk about. When I find nar­ra­tive non­fic­tion that tells a com­pelling sto­ry, I’m thank­ful … and intrigued. I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly hap­py to find books that fea­ture less­er-known aspects of sci­ence, there­by taunt­ing my curiosity.… more

There’s Nothing to Dooooooooo

Photoplay
by Vic­ki Palmquist By this point in the sum­mer when I was young, the charm of being out of school had worn off, I’d played every game on my grandma’s shelves, and I’d had a few fights with my friends in the neigh­bor­hood, so I’d retreat­ed to read­ing as many books as I could, con­sum­ing sto­ries like Ms. Pac­man swal­low­ing ener­gy pellets.… more

Teaching K‑2 Science with Confidence

Perfect Pairs
Per­fect Pairs: Using Fic­tion and Non­fic­tion Books to Teach Life Sci­ence, K‑2
Melis­sa Stew­art and Nan­cy Ches­ley
Sten­house Books, 2014 Authen­tic sci­ence always begins with a ques­tion, with a fleet­ing thought, with a curi­ous per­son. That curi­ous per­son has an idea, won­ders if it is valid, and then tries to find out. Because won­der­ing is at the heart of dis­cov­ery, each Per­fect Pairs les­son starts with a Won­der State­ment that we’ve care­ful­ly craft­ed to address one Next Gen­er­a­tion Sci­ence Stan­dards Per­for­mance Expec­ta­tion.… more

Hands-on History for Spatial Learners

When I was in ele­men­tary school, I was nev­er more excit­ed than when the teacher told us we could make a dio­ra­ma or a minia­ture scene of a pio­neer set­tle­ment. The con­cept, plan­ning, and build­ing were thrilling for me. Even though my fin­ished work sel­dom approached the daz­zling dis­play I could see in my head, I learned a great deal about his­to­ry, engi­neer­ing, sci­ence, and card­board from my for­ays into build­ing a small world in three dimensions.… more

Literary Madeleine: The Horse

madeleines
I am not a horse person. Oh, I survived a week at Girl Scout riding camp and years later when I was on the staff at a Y camp I enjoyed helping bridle and saddle horses for the early morning trail riders. But I’ve never been truly comfortable riding or, maybe especially...