Review of My First Day, by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

My First Day

What Animals Do on Day One

by Steve Jenkins & Robin Page

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, Boston, 2013. 32 pages.
Starred Review

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Steve Jenkins’ work, having named three of his books Sonderbooks Stand-outs. I love the way he combines amazingly detailed and realistic cut-paper artwork with scientific facts about the world.

My First Day gets extra bonus points for being way too cute. The book features twenty-two specific types of animals — for example, not just a tiger, but a Siberian tiger, not just a turtle, but a leatherback turtle — and tells us what they do on their very first day.

The range is wide. A capybara can swim and dive when it’s just a few hours old. A polar bear cub sleeps in a snow den with its mother until Spring. A blue wildebeest trots along with its mother, because its herd is on the move.

One thing I love about this book is the pacing and pictures and subject matter are all perfect for preschoolers or early elementary school kids. Yet it’s serious nonfiction, and fascinating information that I didn’t even know until I read the book. What a wonderful way to get a child hooked on nonfiction!

Here’s an example set of pages, to give an idea of the gentle pacing:

On my first day, my mother held me close so I wouldn’t drift out to sea.

I dozed on her belly while she floated in the waves.

sea otter

On my first day, I raced to the water.

The beach was a dangerous place, and I was on my own as soon as I hatched.

leatherback turtle

Combined with the gentle text, imagine detailed, realistic, yet adorable illustrations of the baby in question with or without its parent, as appropriate. And to cap it all off, the last baby featured is the polar bear cub, who tells us, on its first day, “I fell asleep.”

For older, inquiring minds, there are end notes that tell a little more about each creature, so you don’t have to end on that cozy, perfect-bedtime-story finish. This book will work for a wide range of ages, but will be especially perfect for getting the youngest listeners hooked on nonfiction.

I’m posting this review today in honor of Nonfiction Monday, hosted today by Pierogies & Gyoza.

hmhbooks.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/my_first_day.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of The Brain That Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge

The Brain That Changes Itself

Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

by Norman Doidge, M.D.

Viking, 2007. 427 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #6 Other Nonfiction

Big thanks to my friend and co-worker Ivelisse Figueroa-Gonzalez for recommending this book to me after I had my stroke.

This is a book about neuroplasticity. We have learned, fairly recently, that the brain can heal from injury; the brain can change its wiring. How we use our brains is important.

Some words from the Preface explain what you’ll find in this book:

This book is about the revolutionary discovery that the human brain can change itself, as told through the stories of the scientists, doctors, and patients who have together brought about these astonishing transformations. Without operations or medications, they have made use of the brain’s hitherto unknown ability to change. Some were patients who had what were thought to be incurable brain problems; others were people without specific problems who simply wanted to improve the functioning of their brains or preserve them as they aged. For four hundred years this venture would have been inconceivable because mainstream medicine and science believed that brain anatomy was fixed. The common wisdom was that after childhood the brain changed only when it began the long process of decline; that when brain cells failed to develop properly, or were injured, or died, they could not be replaced. Nor could the brain ever alter its structure and find a new way to function if part of it was damaged. The theory of the unchanging brain decreed that people who were born with brain or mental limitations, or who sustained brain damage, would be limited or damaged for life. Scientists who wondered if the healthy brain might be improved or preserved through activity or mental exercise were told not to waste their time. . . .

I began a series of travels, and in the process I met a band of brilliant scientists, at the frontiers of brain science, who had, in the late 1960s or early 1970s, made a series of unexpected discoveries. They showed that the brain changed its very structure with each different activity it performed, perfecting its circuits so it was better suited to the task at hand. If certain “parts” failed, then other parts could sometimes take over. The machine metaphor, of the brain as an organ with specialized parts, could not fully account for changes the scientists were seeing. They began to call this fundamental brain property “neuroplasticity.”

Neuro is for “neuron,” the nerve cells in our brains and nervous systems. Plastic is for “changeable, malleable, modifiable.” At first many of the scientists didn’t dare use the word “neuroplasticity” in their publications, and their peers belittled them for promoting a fanciful notion. Yet they persisted, slowly overturning the doctrine of the unchanging brain. They showed that children are not always stuck with the mental abilities they are born with; that the damaged brain can often reorganize itself so that when one part fails, another can often substitute; that if brain cells die, they can at times be replaced; that many “circuits” and even basic reflexes that we think are hardwired are not. One of these scientists even showed that thinking, learning, and acting can turn our genes on or off, thus shaping our brain anatomy and our behavior — surely one of the most extraordinary discoveries of the twentieth century.

In the course of my travels I met a scientist who enabled people who had been blind since birth to begin to see, another who enabled the deaf to hear; I spoke with people who had had strokes decades before and had been declared incurable, who were helped to recover with neuroplastic treatments; I met people whose learning disorders were cured and whose IQs were raised; I saw evidence that it is possible for eighty-year-olds to sharpen their memories to function the way they did when they were fifty-five. I saw people rewire their brains with their thoughts, to cure previously incurable obsessions and traumas. I spoke with Nobel laureates who were hotly debating how we must rethink our model of the brain now that we know it is ever changing.

The chapters of the book look at different aspects of neuroplasticity. He covers many different things, including stroke recovery; sharpening perception and memory; healing learning problems; stopping worries, obsessions, and bad habits; counteracting aging; psychoanalysis; and even sexual attraction and love.

I can’t emphasize enough how fascinating this book is. I’m not sure if it has direct application to my own stroke, since it hit my balance center, not my higher thinking. (Though I did purchase a balance board after reading this book.) I’ve already recommended the book to parents of children with OCD, and I’ve decided that my guilty pleasure of doing Killer Sudoku at bedtime is actually therapy so I won’t lose my ability to think logically as I age.

And so much of the book, whether practical or not, is simply interesting. Here’s an example:

When it came to allocating brain-processing power, brain maps were governed by competition for precious resources and the principle of use it or lose it.

The competitive nature of plasticity affects us all. There is an endless war of nerves going on inside each of our brains. If we stop exercising our mental skills, we do not just forget them: the brain map space for those skills is turned over to the skills we practice instead. If you ever ask yourself, “How often must I practice French, or guitar, or math to keep on top of it?” you are asking a question about competitive plasticity. You are asking how frequently you must practice an activity to make sure its brain map space is not lost to another.

Competitive plasticity in adults even explains some of our limitations. Think of the difficulty most adults have in learning a second language. The conventional view now is that the difficulty arises because the critical period for language learning has ended, leaving us with a brain too rigid to change its structure on a large scale. But the discovery of competitive plasticity suggests there is more to it. As we age, the more we use our native language, the more it comes to dominate our linguistic map space. Thus it is because our brain is plastic — and because plasticity is competitive — that it is so hard to learn a new language and end the tyranny of the mother tongue.

But why, if this is true, is it easier to learn a second language when we are young? Is there not competition then too? Not really. If two languages are learned at the same time, during the critical period, both get a foothold. Brain scans, says Merzenich, show that in a bilingual child all the sounds of its two languages share a single large map, a library of sounds from both languages.

Another fascinating section speculating about cognitive problems as we age:

Mezenich says, . . . “We have an intense period of learning in childhood. Every day is a day of new stuff. And then, in our early employment, we are intensely engaged in learning and acquiring new skills and abilities. And more and more as we progress in life we are operating as users of mastered skills and abilities.”

Psychologically, middle age is often an appealing time because, all else being equal, it can be a relatively placid period compared with what has come before. Our bodies aren’t changing as they did in adolescence; we’re more likely to have a solid sense of who we are and be skilled at a career. We still regard ourselves as active, but we have a tendency to deceive ourselves into thinking that we are learning as we were before. We rarely engage in tasks in which we must focus our attention as closely as we did when we were younger, trying to learn a new vocabulary or master new skills. Such activities as reading the newspaper, practicing a profession of many years, and speaking our own language are mostly the replay of mastered skills, not learning. By the time we hit our seventies, we may not have systematically engaged the systems in the brain that regulate plasticity for fifty years.

That’s why learning a new language in old age is so good for improving and maintaining the memory generally. Because it requires intense focus, studying a language turns on the control system for plasticity and keeps it in good shape for laying down sharp memories of all kinds. . . . Anything that requires highly focused attention will help that system — learning new physical activities that require concentration, solving challenging puzzles, or making a career change that requires that you master new skills and material. Merzenich himself is an advocate of learning a new language in old age. “You will gradually sharpen everything up again, and that will be very highly beneficial to you.”

The same applies to mobility. Just doing the dances you learned years ago won’t help your brain’s motor cortex to stay in shape. To keep the mind alive requires learning something truly new with intense focus. That is what will allow you to both lay down new memories and have a system that can easily access and preserve the older ones.

Another whole chapter deals with progress in healing stroke patients. I’m not yet sure how it applies to me, because the effects of my stroke were not immediately obvious. Now they are manifesting as vestibular migraines. Is it possible that working with the balance centers of my brain would begin to rewire my brain? This book raises intriguing questions in my mind as well as revealing lots of answers to questions I had never before asked.

Fascinating reading for anyone at all interested in the brain and how it works.

penguin.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/brain_that_changes_itself.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Moonbird, by Phillip Hoose

Moonbird

A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012. 160 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Standout: #9 Children’s Nonfiction
2013 Sibert Honor
2013 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Finalist

Moonbird tells the story of a rufa red knot banded with the number B95 in the year 1995 who has been spotted many times since. These birds are some of the greatest distance travelers on earth, and B95 is the oldest known such bird.

This book goes into detail about what physiological changes and athletic feats go into B95’s journey. The author makes the life of a little shorebird into an epic tale. He interviewed many scientists all interested in helping the red knots and other shorebirds continue to survive. Spinning their stories into the overall narrative keeps the book fascinating.

This book covers science, nature, the environment, and what you can do to help. An outstanding science book that will interest everyone from elementary school readers to adults. I doubt anyone can read this book without learning something, but probably a lot of somethings. And even harder would be to read this book without becoming interested in the plight of a little bird and its flock.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/moonbird.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on an Advance Review Copy I got at an ALA conference.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Feynman, by Jim Ottaviani

Feynman

written by Jim Ottaviani
art by Leland Myrick
coloring by Hilary Sycamore

First Second, New York, 2011. 266 pages.
Starred Review

How to make the life and work of a brilliant, if quirky, physicist accessible to the general reader? Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick have done an amazing job by putting the biography in graphic novel form.

Not only do they present the scope of Richard Feynman’s accomplishments, including such a wide variety from work on the atomic bomb to work on the committee investigating the space shuttle’s explosion, they also present the basic idea of some of his pioneering concepts in physics. And they talk about his personal life, including his first wife who died not too long after their marriage, and his defense of a man who was running a strip club, and his decision to give up drinking.

The one thing I didn’t like? It was hard to tell apart all the physicists in their shirts and ties. I finally got to where I could spot Feynman by his crazy hair, but that was about as far as I got.

However, this book inspired me to want to read more about Feynman, and it was a fascinating and interesting story in its own right. It didn’t inspire me the way Feynman’s Rainbow did, but it was another side to a man who made a big difference on our planet.

This is Teen Nonfiction, and I decided to post it on the regular nonfiction page rather than the Children’s Nonfiction page, because even in the graphic memoir format, it’s going to go way over the heads of most children, but most adults won’t mind reading a comic book about a great scientist.

firstsecondbooks.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/feynman.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Writing Reviews, Posting Reviews

I have a problem. It’s a good problem. I am way behind on reviews I have written but haven’t posted. Right now there are 97 of them.

Partly, this problem came from the solution to an earlier problem: I was way behind on books I’d read but hadn’t reviewed. I decided to solve that problem by spending 30 minutes per day writing reviews. Some time ago, I’d tried and succeeded — for an entire year — to write 30 minutes a day on my book. For now, I’m putting my book-writing on hold. I went to the William Morris Seminar in January to learn about ALSC’s Book Evaluation Committees. It’s seen as conflict of interest to have a book being published when you are evaluating books for a committee (like the Newbery), so I decided I haven’t gotten published in all this time, why not wait a little longer and see if I can get on a committee first? Surely I can write in the meantime — just not try to find a publisher. Well, I decided that, and then got more and more lazy about my 30 minutes per day goal. When I saw how behind I was on books to be reviewed, I decided to let myself spend that time on review writing. And I’ve caught up!

Or, I’ve sort of caught up. There’s a problem. If I write one review per day but don’t post one review per day, I will never catch up. The fact is, I need to be much, much more choosy about which books I review. Right now I’ve got four books sitting here that I liked very much and want to recommend, but I think I will discipline myself and not review them.

Or, how about this: I’ll give a mini-review here and now, but won’t make a full-on page with links on my main site.

Here are four excellent books. First two picture books.

Rabbit’s Snow Dance, as told by James and Joseph Bruchac, illustrated by Jeff Newman, tells a folk tale about how rabbit got his short tail. The book would make a wonderful read-aloud, with chants like “I will make it snow, AZIKANAPO!” and a longer chant in a circle that begs for the listeners to act out. Rabbit has a nice comeuppance at the end, or, well, comedownance, and that’s how he loses his long tail. Joseph and James Bruchac are storytellers, and this story definitely wants to be told.

Sleep Like a Tiger, by Mary Logue, illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski, is one I got fresh appreciation for when I heard people talk about it at Capitol Choices. This is a deceptively simple bedtime story. A little girl is not sleepy at bedtime, and her parents tell her she doesn’t have to go to sleep, but she does have to put on her pajamas… and so on. Along the way, they talk about how different animals sleep. The pictures show the animals, like a tiger, in their habitat, while in alternate spreads the little girl settles into her bed with her stuffed animals and toys. In the end, she settles down like the animals do. This is a cozy and lovely bedtime book.

Then, two books of children’s nonfiction, both about birds:

Alex the Parrot: No Ordinary Bird, by Stephanie Spinner, illustrated by Meilo So, is another picture book, but tells a true story. It includes short chapters, but there is no table of contents and this is definitely suitable for younger kids. The story is about an African Grey Parrot and his owner, Irene Pepperberg. She used Alex to show that parrots possess true intelligence. The book talks about Alex’s progress and how he was tested and matched three-year-old children.

Moonbird: A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95, by Phillip Hoose, is much longer. It covers science, nature, the environment and what you can do to help. Moonbird tells the story of a rufa red knot banded with the number B95 in the year 1995 who has been spotted since. These birds are some of the greatest distance travelers on earth, and B95 is the oldest known such bird. The book goes into detail about what physiological changes and athletic feats go into his journey. The author interviewed many scientists all interested in helping the red knots and other shorebirds continue to survive.

So there you have it — Four more excellent books. Some day, I will catch up…. Meanwhile, keep reading!

Review of The Mighty Mars Rovers, by Elizabeth Rusch

The Mighty Mars Rovers

The Incredible Adventures of Spirit and Opportunity

by Elizabeth Rusch

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, Boston, 2012. 80 pages.
Starred Review

This book is part of the Scientists in the Field, and focuses on a particular scientist behind the project to first send rovers onto Mars. The book is riveting, informative, and of course, timely. Though it went to press before Curiosity reached Mars, it tells about the planned landing and will make readers want to find out more, and what’s going on right now.

The scientist whose dream is the focus of this book is Steven Squyres. In a brief introductory chapter, they tell about his career that brought him to the Mars Rover mission. He actually thought for awhile of becoming a geologist — which led directly to his interest in having a robot on the ground in Mars to study the planet directly.

He ended up writing proposals for a Mars rover for eight years and for eight years got refused. But he didn’t give up, and was eventually given three years to build two rovers to send to Mars.

The book tells about every step of the mission, with a multitude of photographs or artist’s renderings along the way. It’s all explained clearly. Here’s an example:

Steve and Pete considered how each decision would affect every other. For example, the scientists wanted to put as many instruments on the rover as possible: cameras, microscopes, drills, and a weather station. Engineers had to design solar panels large enough to power all the instruments. But if the rover got too big, it wouldn’t fit in the lander (the case that would protect the rover during landing). Even worse, if the rover and the lander got too heavy, the whole spacecraft would crash.

Steve and his team added instruments and cut instruments. Engineers redesigned solar panels again and again. As the parts were built, engineers tested them. Too often, parts failed. Electronics malfunctioned. Cable cutters designed to set the rovers free from their landers didn’t work properly. Parachutes responsible for slowing the rovers down as they careened toward the surface fluttered in the wind and ripped to shreds. Airbags that were supposed to cushion the fall of the rovers onto the surface of Mars tore.

If the parts didn’t work, how would the team ever get the rovers to work?

The book goes through the missions to Mars and how each rover landed in a different spot. Elizabeth Rusch explains how the rovers were operated once they landed on Mars and the many different obstacles they faced. She explains the process the scientists went through trying to decide if Opportunity could climb down into a crater and how they worked to rescue the rovers when they got stuck in the Martian sand.

The author beautifully communicates the stunning accomplishments of the Mars rover mission team. She sums up in her final chapter:

Steve and his team of scientists and engineers expected the rovers to last three months, tops. Spirit and opportunity endured for more than six years — and scientists are still counting. These little machines explored a record-breaking 25 miles (44 km) of Mars’s surface and snapped more than a quarter of a million photos there, including 360-degree views of hills, plains, and craters. They became so much more than rovers. They did the work of geologists, meteorologists, chemists, photographers, mountain climbers, and crater trekkers. . . .

“What connects all this for me is that I simply love to explore,” Steve said. “I love doing something nobody else has done, going someplace no one has ever been, discovering stuff no one has ever seen.”

This book communicates the magnificence of human endeavor in science, along with nitty-gritty details. It shows how real people can do what it takes to learn things humans never knew before.

elizabethrusch.com
marsrover.nasa.gov
hmhbooks.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/mighty_mars_rovers.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Swirl by Swirl, by Joyce Sidman, pictures by Beth Krommes

Swirl by Swirl

Spirals in Nature

by Joyce Sidman
pictures by Beth Krommes

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2011. 36 pages.

This is a gentle and soothing picture book that rewards reading and examining again and again. The text is unrhymed poetry, with only a few lines on a page, and very large print.

You could read this book to very young children with a short attention span, but it will also work with older children, who can notice new details on each page.

The beautiful pictures were created by Beth Krommes, Caldecott medalist for The House in the Night. She uses the same scratchboard technique here, with more colors. The technique works well for showing spirals, since the lines are distinct and clear.

Here’s the first page. It says:

“A spiral is a snuggling shape.
It fits neatly in small places.
Coiled tight, warm and safe, it waits . . .”

We’ve got a snow scene, but most of the picture is taken up with what’s underground. We see several animals curled up in their nests for the winter, and small print labels them: a bull snake, harvest mouse, eastern chipmunk, and woodchuck. All the animals are resting in a coiled shape.

The next page shows those same animals emerging into a springtime landscape, but the sharp reader will still spot some spirals.

The book goes on, gently and soothingly, showing seashells, ferns, ram’s horns, coiled tails and trunks, spiderwebs, and even gets much bigger in waves, whirlpools, and tornadoes. The climax takes us all the way out to galaxies, and then back to the cozy winter landscape again.

There are even two pages at the back that give some of the science (and math!) behind spirals.

This was one of the books we discussed at the Bill Morris Seminar in January, and my fellow attendees made me appreciate it all the more. It’s the sort of book into which you can delve much deeper than initially meets the eye, a book you and your children will want to look at and read again and again.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/swirl_by_swirl.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of The Mind’s Eye, by Oliver Sacks

The Mind’s Eye

by Oliver Sacks
read by Oliver Sacks and Richard Davidson

Random House Audio, 2010. 8 hours, 30 minutes on 7 discs.
Starred Review

This was perhaps not the best thing to listen to after having had a stroke, since it told me things that could have happened to me and made me hyperaware of new symptoms. However, this book was completely fascinating, and I found myself talking about it to people the whole time I was listening to it.

Richard Davidson read most of the audiobook, but Oliver Sacks gave introductions to each chapter, and completely read the chapter about his own experience with vision problems and the tumor he had growing on one eye. Both narrators were excellent, though I was a little jarred when Oliver Sacks’ section ended. I would have preferred that to be the final section, though he did follow a logical progression from vision difficulties on to complete blindness.

The book talks about vision and the brain. He begins describing cases where people suddenly lost their ability to read, because of a brain injury. They can still recognize letters of the alphabet, but not put them together as words unless they spell them out or write them out. Many of these people can still write, but they cannot read. Oliver Sacks delves into several different cases and how the people found ways to cope.

He progresses to people with face blindness, who can’t recognize people or places. I was very surprised to learn that Oliver Sacks himself has a certain amount of face blindness. He has, on occasion, failed to recognize himself when passing a mirror. I thought it was even more striking that one time he looked through a window, saw a tall man with a beard, and started trying to groom his beard, thinking it was a mirror. He talked about people with much worse disability in this area, who had to figure out how to cope without being able to recognize commonplace objects by looking at them.

And there’s more. He talks about several different variations of problems in the visual cortex. When he had cancer and lost vision in one eye, he said it wasn’t just as if half his visual field were cut off; it was as if people who went into his large blindspot actually disappeared.

The final section on blindness was also fascinating. Some people get extra good at visualizing, including an engineer who could now visualize going inside an engine to repair it. Another person lost the ability to visualize at all, but gained an enhanced ability to sense things in other ways.

This entire book is fascinating. The mind is amazing, and we can learn much about how it works by seeing how people cope when a small part is damaged. This is a fascinating look at vision and perception and the way we relate to the world around us.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/minds_eye.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library audiobook from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Just a Second, by Steve Jenkins

Just a Second

A Different Way to Look at Time

by Steve Jenkins

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2011
Starred Review

I think this is the first time I’ve read a book by Steve Jenkins where I pored over the words without noticing the exquisite art the first time through. Make no mistake, his cut-paper art is as detailed and amazing as ever. It’s so realistic, I’m not sure I noticed at first that it was his usual cut-paper art and not drawings.

But the text! This is a practical way to explain time. He mentions where seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years came from (most being a long-time-ago invention of man). Then he tells some things that happen in each amount of time.

Did you know that in one second “A peregrine falcon in a dive, or stoop, plunges more than 300 feet”?

Did you know that in one week “Moose antlers, the fastest-growing tissue of any mammal, can add 6 inches to their length”?

Did you know that in one year “More than 2,000,000 people are killed by mosquito-borne diseases”? “Humans cut down 4,000,000,000 trees”?

The book is full of facts like that: some fascinating, some surprising, some disturbing. Some, like “In one year an estimated 50 people are killed by sharks,” may be included because the accompanying illustrations are so much fun.

This book definitely succeeds as a “Different Way to Look at Time.” Good for children learning about time, as well as for science buffs, as well as for the simply curious.

stevejenkinsbooks.com
hmhbooks.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/just_a_second.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Charles and Emma, by Deborah Heiligman

Charles and Emma

The Darwins’ Leap of Faith

Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2009. 268 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Winner YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award
2009 National Book Award Finalist
2010 Printz Honor Book

Okay, when this book first came out, I wasn’t too interested. I grew up in a conservative Christian family, and didn’t exactly see Charles Darwin as a hero. Then the book kept winning awards, and got strong comments from the judges in School Library Journal’s Battle of the Books. I thought I really should read it. Then I met Deborah Heiligman at the 2010 ALA Annual Conference. When I found out why she wrote it, I knew I had to read it. I purchased a book and got her signature. However, it still took me until this year, when I was taking a class on the Printz Award, to finally get it read.

Deborah explains in the Acknowledgments at the back of the book how her husband got her interested in the story that would become this book:

“Jon’s been writing about science and evolution since we met. I had just graduated from college with a major in religious studies. We started talking immediately — about science and religion and writing and pretty much everything else — and we haven’t stopped since.

“One day, about seven years ago, Jon said to me, ‘You know, Charles Darwin’s wife was religious.’ I looked at him. He continued, ‘And they loved each other very much. She was afraid he would go to hell and they wouldn’t be together for eternity.'”

Evolution is supposed to be opposed to Christianity, right? So how is it possible that Charles Darwin’s wife was deeply religious — and yet the two were very much in love.

Deborah Heiligman tells the love story of Charles and Emma Darwin beautifully. It’s clearly a work of nonfiction — she relies heavily on letters and journals and notebooks written by the two of them — but it reads like a novel. Of course, in a story book, the marriage probably wouldn’t have worked. I found it especially interesting that Charles’ father advised him not to tell his new wife about his doubts about religion. But Charles couldn’t hide them from her. And she loved him anyway and even edited his books, including The Origin of Species.

This book tells the story of how Charles Darwin’s scientific theories developed, but it especially shows us the man who loved his wife and children very much. And whatever your views, you can’t help but fall for the man presented here, and the wife who provided exactly what he needed to be such a distinguished scientist.

This book is wonderfully presented. I like the quotations at the head of each chapter and the way Deborah Heiligman has arranged the facts in such an interesting manner. This book presents a compelling story that is all the more amazing because it’s true.

“You will be forming theories about me & if I am cross or out of temper you will only consider ‘What does that prove.’ Which will be a very grand & philosophical way of considering it. — Emma to Charles, January 23, 1839”

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Source: This review is based on my own book, purchased at ALA Annual Conference and signed by the author.