bookshelf

ASTRONAUT IN TRAINING

Name: ASTRONAUT IN TRAINING
Author: Catherine Ard
ISBN: 978-0-7534-7442-6

by Catherine Ard ; illustrated by Sarah Lawrence ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 25, 2018

Stimulating career guidance for young STEM-winders.

bookshelf

A quick course in the skills and background knowledge an astronaut needs.

With the announcement that “You have been selected for astronaut training,” a narrator squires a diverse group of young cartoon figures past sets of small photos of real astronauts in training and larger cartoon views of space and spacecraft, all paired to short explanatory remarks. The course begins with a physical workout, a bit of Russian vocabulary (useful, since astronaut launches are all currently from a Russian base), and a ride on the infamous “Vomit Comet.” In no logical order later spreads introduce constellations and the solar system, take trainees on a trip to the moon, survey galaxies, discuss gravity, preview living and working aboard the ISS, and gather eight luminaries including Laika and Stephen Hawking into an astronautical “Hall of Fame.” The co-published Scientist in Training puts a similarly diverse group in lab coats and offers glimpses of what scientists study, with introductions to fossils, seasons, the water cycle, physical forces, habitats, the human body, and other STEM fields. Aside from a specious claim in the former volume that there “isn’t much gravity in space, so you will float” and in the latter, a slightly misleading claim that scientists “perform exploding experiments,” the informational load, though light, is on-target. Both volumes feature inset spinners on the cover, scattered games within, and multiple-choice review quizzes at the end.

Stimulating career guidance for young STEM-winders. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-7534-7442-6

Page Count: 48

Publisher: Kingfisher

Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
YELLOWSTONE
by Catherine Ard ; illustrated by Bianca Austria

- BOOK REVIEW
LET'S PLAY OUTDOORS!
by Catherine Ard ; illustrated by Carla McRae

bookshelf

BUTT OR FACE?

by Kari Lavelle ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2023

A gleeful game for budding naturalists.

bookshelf

Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.

In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: July 11, 2023

ISBN: 9781728271170

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore

Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
ODE TO GRAPEFRUIT
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Bryan Collier

- BOOK REVIEW
WE MOVE THE WORLD
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Nabi H. Ali

bookshelf

THE WONDERFUL WISDOM OF ANTS

by Philip Bunting ; illustrated by Philip Bunting ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2024

Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched.

bookshelf

An amiable introduction to our thrifty, sociable, teeming insect cousins.

Bunting notes that all the ants on Earth weigh roughly the same as all the people and observes that ants (like, supposedly, us) love recycling, helping others, and taking “micronaps.” They, too, live in groups, and their “superpower” is an ability to work together to accomplish amazing things. Bunting goes on to describe different sorts of ants within the colony (“Drone. Male. Does no housework. Takes to the sky. Reproduces. Drops dead”), how they communicate using pheromones, and how they get from egg to adult. He concludes that we could learn a lot from them that would help us leave our planet in better shape than it was when we arrived. If he takes a pass on mentioning a few less positive shared traits (such as our tendency to wage war on one another), still, his comparisons do invite young readers to observe the natural world more closely and to reflect on our connections to it. In the simple illustrations, generic black ants look up at viewers with little googly eyes while scurrying about the pages gathering food, keeping nests clean, and carrying outsized burdens.

Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched. (Informational picture book. 6-8)