Science Rocks! MORE Books about All Sorts of Science

Time for more science books - questions, answers, a funny story and robots!

 A Place for Fish by Melissa Stewart, illustrated by Higgins Bond

Melissa Stewart is a science queen and writes wonderful books about science topics. A Place for Fish tells how human activities threaten fish. It also tells what humans can do, or change, to create places for fish to thrive. Each double page also gives more information for readers who want more. This is a beautiful and well written book. Other books in the series include:

A Place for Butterflies

A Place for Birds

A Place for Frogs

 Just a Second: A Different Way to Look at Time by Steve Jenkins
I have been a fan of Steve Jenkins' books for a long time. This book is one of his greatest. It has a simple concept: What can happen in a second? Well, a bat can make 200 high-pitched calls. A vulture in flight flaps its wings once. And what can happen in a minute? An hour? One day?... One year? Great stuff! 

 The Book of Why? 50Questions and All the Answers by Kath Grimshaw

Ever wonder why soap makes bubbles? Why leopards have spots? Why deserts are sandy? This book answers these questions and 47 more.

This Book Requires Safety Goggles: A Collection of Bizarre Science Trivia by Kristi Lew (sorry, no link)

Find out if lightning can knock your socks off. Find out about a mountain that grows. Find out about a liquid metal. Find out what the Magnus Effect has to do with baseball. This book has lots of interesting stuff!

 The Quest to Digest by Mary K. Corcoran, illustrated by Jef Czekaj

Somehow, this book’s author and illustrator manage to make the digestion process both easy to understand and funny. Sections include Chew on This, As the Stomach Churns, Give Me a Squeeze Please, and others. Quite fun!

 Why? by Catherine Ripley, illustrated by Scot Ritchie

Why do my fingers get so wrinkled in the tub? Why do my fingers stick to the frozen juice cans? Why can’t I see just after the lights go out? Why are peaches fuzzy? Why do horses sleep standing up? All good questions and there are 66 more!

 Question Boy Meets LittleMiss Know-It-All by Peter Catalanotto

Question Boy (dressed as a super hero) asks questions, LOTS of questions. Enough questions to make grown-ups back away or drive off quickly. So what happens when he meets Miss Know-It-All (who knows LOTS of stuff)? They clash, but then… This book made me laugh LOTS of times.

 Island: A Story of the Galápagos by Jason Chin

This is an amazing book! In just 25 picture book pages, it tells the life story of an island over a span of 6 million years. It starts as a volcano, it cools, animals find it and it becomes a complete civilization. The text and pictures are so clear, you feel as though you really understand the life of this island: birth, childhood, adulthood and old age. I look forward to reading this author’s other books, Redwoods and Coral Reefs.

 Robot Experiments by Ed Sobey

Written for upper-elementary and middle school students, this book is stuffed with science projects about robots. It starts with some easier projects (such as taking apart motors) and works up to actually building a robot. Projects that would make good science fair projects are marked. This is part of the Cool Science Projects with Technology series. Other books:

Electric Motor Experiments

Radio-Controlled Car Experiments

Solar Cell and Renewable Energy Experiments

Please share your favorite science books - write them in the Comments box!

Gail 

Science Rocks! Books about All Sorts of Science

Science is great for so many reasons. It answers questions. It creates questions. It comes up with cool things to observe and think about. Sometimes, it just stops you in your tracks with amazingness. And it is at the base of all this week's and next week's books.

A Rock is Lively by Dianna Hutts Aston, illustrated by Sylvia Long

I like this book for so many reasons. It’s all about rocks, a fascinating topic, I think. The pictures are fantastic, showing all the colors and textures of rocks. The information is clearly presented in easy chunks. And the ideas are neat: A rock is lively. A rock is mixed up. A rock is creative…

First the Egg by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

First the egg then the chicken. Cause and effect is all around us. As I read this book the first time, I tried to guess all the cause and effect pairs. Some are not too hard (tadpole-frog) but some downright unguessable (at least for me). I love everything about this book – its simplicity, its cut-out pages and its cleverness.

How We Learned the Earth Is Round by Patricia Lauber, illustrated by Megan Lloyd

It’s not too surprising that early people thought Earth was flat. If you look across a field or ocean, it certainly looks flat. But then people wondered about why ships seemed to sink as they sailed away, instead of just getting smaller and smaller. This book tells about how people used their observations to come to the conclusion that Earth is round.

Hello! Hello! by Matthew Cordell

A girl is bored with her electronics. She tries to get her family’s attention but they are distracted by their electronics. She goes outside and Whoa! there is a whole WORLD of interesting things. This book makes me smile.

 Metamorphosis: Changing Bodies by Bobbie Kalman

Metamorphosis is one of those things that just proves that life is very cool. Such changes! This book shows the stages of life of a butterfly, a frog, a dragonfly, and a grasshopper. Great pictures!

The Case of the Vanishing Golden Frogs: A Scientific Mystery by Sandra Markle (sorry, no link)

If you want to learn about scientific process, this is a terrific book to read. It closely follows scientist Karen Lips as she works to figure out why the golden frogs of Panama are vanishing. She looks at many possible sources – pollution, climate change and others. Although there is a lot of text here, it is written clearly. And there are also lots of pictures. I look forward to reading more of Sandra Markle’s books.

Ocean Sunlight by Molly Bang and Penny Chisholm

This book is a marvel. It takes complex subjects – photosynthesis, the food chain, phytoplankton, marine snow (this one was news to me!) and lots of other stuff and makes them crystal clear. And it’s perfectly illustrated. There are other sunlight books by Molly Bang I look forward to reading:
My Light

Living Sunlight

Of course, I can't stop here - next week there will be more amazing science books!

Gail