When it's Hot Enough to Fry an Egg on the Sidewalk...

 

This book was published three years ago, but because of the heat wave in the northeast, it seems like a perfect pick for today. It got so hot in Oregon that roads buckled and Portland shut off the streetcars because heat was melting the cables. Scorching temperatures soared to 116 F in some places – hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk!

Iqbal and His Ingenious Idea: How a Science Project Helps One Family and the Planet 

by Elizabeth Suneby; illus. by Rebecca Green 

32 pages; ages 5-10

‎Kids Can Press, 2018

theme: STEM, sustainability, problem-solving

Iqbal lives in Bangladesh and it’s the monsoon, when “gusts of rain whip across your face and make you squint your eyes.” At home, Iqbal’s mother cooks the meals over an indoor fire. The smoke irritates her lungs, causing her and the baby to cough.

Iqbal wants to win the prize at the science fair so he can use the prize money to buy his mother a gas cookstove. He’s got a month to come up for a project that fits with the theme of sustainability.

What I like about this book: This is a fun story to read, while broaching a serious topic at the same time. We see Iqbal trying to come up with ideas. He sketches gadgets with gears, he conceives of contraptions, he dreams of devices. Could he build a smokeless cooker? With help from his teacher, they get ideas from the internet, and Iqbal designs a solar cooker from things most people have in his village: broken umbrellas. He lines his umbrella with foil, borrows a soot-blackened cookpot, and is ready to test his stove. All he needs is a sunny day to test it.

Beyond the Books:

Can you really fry an egg on the sidewalk? Probably not. Eggs need to reach a temperature of 158 F to cook through – hard to do on a white surface. A better idea would be to fry an egg on the hood of a car sitting under the hot sun (remember: eggs will run, and car hoods are curved). One Arizona girl had a brilliant idea: put the greenhouse effect to use and fry an egg inside a car on a hot day. You can watch her video here. It’s also a good reminder of why you don’t leave pets – or people – inside cars.

Make your own solar cooker. Here’s how to turn a pizza box into a solar oven, and here’s how to turn any kind of box into a cooker.  You can also use an old umbrella and lots of shiny foil, like Iqbal. A good test is to use your oven to make s’mores.

We’ll join Perfect Picture Book Friday once they resume. It’s a wonderful gathering where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copy found on the library shelves.

Want a Pet? Invent one!

Invent-a-Pet
by Vicky Fang; illus. by Tidawan Thaipinnarong
32 pages; ages 3 - 7
Sterling Children's Books, 2020

Invent-a-Pet won’t be released until June, but I wanted to share it before it got buried in the book basket.

theme: problem-solving, STEAM, pets

Katie was an ordinary girl who longed for an extraordinary pet.

Goldfish are too common. Katie wants something unique. Spectacular! So when a machine shows up at her home, Katie tries it out. There are three openings for feeding things into the machine, conveniently labeled “input”. And there’s a lever to pull. So Katie puts in a soccer ball, a blade of grass, and a carrot just to try it out. Then she pulls the lever and out pops a green, round bunny. Aha! she thinks. Now she can make the perfect pet.

What I like about this book: I like that Katie tries to create the perfect pet. She puts in things that she thinks will create a dragon – but other creatures come out. “How does this thing even work?” she asks. I like how Katie uses deductive reasoning to figure out how each input controls a specific variable: size, color, animal. I like how she changes one variable at a time on the machine and keeps notes until she figures out how the machine works. And I like seeing her final “equation” (or set of inputs) for the perfect pet.

I managed to catch up with Vicky by email for One Question:

Sally: What ingredients would YOU put into the Invent-a-Pet machine - and what would your unique pet look like?

Vicky: Ah, I love this question! And surprised I hadn’t thought of an answer before!
A football. A striped grey sock. A ball of yarn.
PUFF! A small, striped, grey kitten!
(Really, I've never had a kitten and I'd like one. And I think they're perfectly extraordinary just the way they are.)

Beyond the Books:

What, for you, makes an animal the “perfect” pet? Draw a picture of your perfect animal companion.

Design a machine to create the perfect pet. Raid the recycling bin and try building a model of your machine. Then write down a list of potential features of pets (size, color, habitat, diet, kind of animal) and then determine what three variables (inputs) to add to your machine.

Vicky is a member of #STEAMTeam2020. You can find out more about her at her website.

Today we're joining Perfect Picture Book Friday, an event where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copy provided by the publisher.

The Queen Bee and Me

The Queen Bee and Me 
by Gillian McDunn
288 pages; ages 8 - 12
Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2020

If I’m honest, it was the title that made me pick up this book. Anything related to bees – no matter how remotely – and I’m going to read the first page or two. Or, as in this case, the entire book. Especially when they open with a line like this:

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who want to look inside to see how stuff works and those who couldn’t care less.

And Meg, the main character, definitely wants to see how stuff works. She’s the kid who tales apart toasters, clocks, blenders, radios, microwaves. Though, she admits, “putting them back together is harder.” Raise your hand if you have found that out the hard way.

While she’s great with science stuff, Meg isn’t so confident with people stuff. Her best friend forever, Beatrix, is changing, there’s a new student in town, Meg really wants to take the science elective, but Beatrix is sure Meg’s gonna fall in line and join the dance class. When Meg is paired with a new girl for a research project, friendship dynamics get complicated.

And then there are the bees: a hive of honey bees that Hazel, the new girl, wants to study for their project. Bees are cool, Hazel explains, and essential for pollination. Without them, we wouldn’t have some of our favorite foods. There’s only one problem… well, maybe two.
Meg is afraid of bees because they sting.
And someone is trying to scuttle Hazel’s plan to raise her bees in town.

What I like love about this book: I love how author Gillian McDunn weaves real science into her novel of middle-grade life. I love how every so often we get a page from Meg’s Animal Fieldwork Project report. And I really love how Meg, with a bit of help, finds her voice to save the bees and her friendships, both old and new.

I give this book one huge Huzzzzzzzzah!

Gillian McDunn is a member of #STEAMTeam2020. You can find out more about her at her website.

Thanks for dropping by today. On Monday we'll be hanging out at Marvelous Middle Grade Monday with other  bloggers. It's over at Greg Pattridge's blog, Always in the Middle, so hop over to see what other people are reading. ARC provided by the publisher.

Ada Twist, Scientist

Ada Twist, Scientist
by Andrea Beaty; illus. by David Roberts
32 pages; ages 5-7
Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2016


themes: imagination, curiosity

 opening lines:

ADA MARIE! ADA MARIE!
Said not a word till the day she turned three. 
She bounced in her crib and looked all around,
observing the world but not making a sound.

Ada Marie is curious about everything, and explores ways to answer her questions - which is exactly what scientists do. She does some research, comes up with a hypothesis, then conducts tests. Some are successful. Some land her in the "thinking chair". How do you know that you can't get an odor off the cat by drying it until you've tested it in the dryer?

What I like about this book: I love her name, inspired by two great women in science: Ada Lovelace and Marie Curie. I love that her first word was "why?" and that she tries things and fails - the sure mark of a curious scientist. And I really love the questions she comes up with. When she smells a horrible stench she asks, "How does a nose know there's something to smell?" I love that her parents support her quest of sorting fiction from fact, and their solution to writing on the walls.

The illustrations are fun, from the cover art to the end pages (graph paper, of course) to the fails and flops and explosions Ada Marie generates.

Beyond the Book: For a quick introduction, check out the book trailer.

Experiment like Ada Twist. In the book, Ada uses soda, mint Mentos, and food coloring to see what happens. A suggestion (having done this myself) - make a paper tube to hold the mentos and a cardboard slider that you can move so they all go in at once. Then move back cuz it will get messy!
It's fun to make the geysers, but turn it into a real experiment by testing how variables affect the geysers. Try different sodas (diet v. non diet, cola v. ginger ale), soda temperature (warm, cold), "freshness" (new bottle v. one opened hours ago). Here's a video that explains the mento reaction with diet soda.

Do some of the activity sheets over at Abrams books.There's also a teaching guide available for download.

Today is PPBF (perfect picture book Friday), an event in which bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's site. She keeps an ever-growing list of Perfect Picture Books. And although this isn't your typical "science book, Sally's sharing it with the folks over at the STEM Friday roundup.  Review copy provided by the publisher. 

The Trouble with Ants

The Trouble with Ants (The Nora Notebooks #1)
by Claudia Mills; illus. by Katie Kath
176 pages; ages 7-10
Knopf, 2015

I love ants - so I could not wait to get my hands on this first in a new series by Claudia Mills. Because who can resist a story about a fourth-grade myrmecologist which features loose ants, a skunked dog, and that dreaded assignment to write a persuasive essay.

The book begins: "Nora Alpers woke up early on New Year's morning and reached for the handsome, leather-bound notebook she had gotten for Christmas." She could use it for a diary, suggests mother. She could write stories in it, suggests her sister. She could write poetry in it, suggests her brother.

But no - Nora plans to scribble interesting facts about ants. Right now, in fact, she's investigating whether ants dig faster in wet sand or dry sand.

I love that chapters end with ant colony observations. I love that random animal behavior facts show up in unlikely places - like how fourth-graders sort themselves into various groups in the cafeteria. And I love the details about making your own ant farm using ants from the back yard (don't do this with fire ants!). Mostly I love that author Mills doesn't shy away from complex language. She calls ant scientists by their name and figures that kids will figure their way through all five syllables.

Oh yeah - and there's a real story going on, too, in spite of the ants. But....will Nora submit a paper about her ant research to Nature? Will she solve the mystery of disappearing ants? And will she be able to convince her friends that ants are cool? Find out the answers to these questions and more in your very own copy of the book, because I'll be re-reading mine.

IF you've got some ants living around your neighborhood, try out these experiments I wrote up in an article for Ranger Rick back in 1998 called "Invite Ants to Lunch".

 Today is Marvelous Middle Grade Monday and we're hanging out with other MMGM bloggers over at Shannon Messenger's blog. Hop over to see what other people are reading. Review from ARC provided by Blue Slip Media.

Ben Franklin's Big Splash ~ A mostly true story

Ben Franklin's Big Splash ~ the mostly true story of his first invention
by Barb Rosenstock; illus. by S.D. Schindler
32 pages; ages 8 and up
Calkins Creek (Boyds Mills Press), 2014

Is this book nonfiction? Is it historical fiction? Does it really matter?

This much is true: Ben Franklin taught himself to swim. Around the age of eleven, he made the first pair of swim fins and tried them out in the Charles River. He even wrote about his invention in a letter to a fellow scientist many years later.

But he never wrote about how he made the fins or the process by which he developed them. That is the part that author Barb Rosenstock imagines.... and she does so with humor and such wonderful language that you will be drawn into this book immediately upon opening it.

"Before the world knew the famous Doctor Benjamin Franklin, his neighbors knew him as Ben, the sturdy, saucy, smelly son of a soap-maker..."  Ben was the kid who would sneak away from work to swim in the river. As Rosenstock puts it:

He STOOD on his hands...
He SLIPPED like an otter
and SLOSHED like a turtle-
SQUIRTING, SPURTING,
and SPOUTING.

Don't you just love the language she uses to describe this skinny kid playing around in the water? While he's swimming, he wonders why he can't swim like a fish.

So he observes the fish. He notices they have fins, where he has hands.... and perhaps that's where he gets his idea for swim fins - wooden paddles that he uses to swim through the water. Like any other scientist, Ben experiences failure, goes back to the drawing board, and tries something different. Question-Research- Hypothesize - Test - Analyze- Conclude - Repeat.... these are the foundations of the scientific method, and Rosenstock shows Franklin going through them all.

Did it happen exactly the way she wrote it? Probably not. That's why she ends with a lengthy author's note telling what is known and what she imagined. At the end there's a timeline of Franklin's life and lists of resources.

Whether it's a "true story" or not, this book offers a glimpse into an unusual childhood invention of a famous inventor. And it does so through fun, imaginative language. With the story focusing on Swim Fins, there's a preponderance of S-words on the page. They are fun to s-s-say...

More to the point, this is a guide for any kid who wants to do science. If Ben could do research, design and test prototypes, collect and analyze data, then anyone reading this book can do the same. You don't need to be stuck in a lab to make discoveries... you can swim in a river.

Today we're joining the roundup over at the Nonfiction Monday blog where you'll find even more book reviews.  Review copy from publisher.

The Universe of Fair

The Universe of Fair
by Leslie Bulion; drawings by Frank Dormer
256 pages, ages 8 -12
Peachtree 2013

Miller Sanford is a science whiz impatient for the "big fair" when he can finally unveil his secret project and "wow" everyone in town. Going to the fair has been a family event, but this year Miller's saving up his coins and lobbying to go on his own. He's even been babysitting his younger sister to show just how responsible he can be.

On fair day his mother can't go and his father has to put in an extra shift at one of the volunteer booths. Instead of enjoying a day with his bud at the fair, Miller ends up in a string of mishaps involving a cemetery, a pie, first-grade tag-alongs as well as balloons and fair fare.

What I love about this book is it's fun and quirky take on science. On the first page Miller's riding home on the school bus thinking about how, if his "molecules and atoms and electrons and quarks were put together in a different way, [he] could just as easily be an earthworm."

And that his fair exhibit is on the "Theory of Everything".

And that it has string theory. String Theory!

Plus the chapter titles are way cool:

• the force field
• shifting molecules
• one-eighth relieved, seven-eighths worried
• a warp in the space-time continuum

 his is part of the Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday round-up. Check out more great reading here. Review copy from publisher.