Professor Astro Cat's Frontiers of SPACE

 By Dominic Newman
Illustrated by Ben Newman

Look at this book!  It's so 1950's!  But modern, too!  The cover has a lovely fabric texture with silver bits.  Some of the printed colours look like they dyed the fabric whereas others look like they're decals.  It's delightfully tactile and visually pleasing.

The facts inside are wonderfully up-to-date and thorough!  It's a real textbook laid out so that a kid could read and understand it.  It's so accessible that I read it to my 3 year old (but skip as many details as possible)

 This is one of our favourite graphics.  There's a full solar system on this page, plus a representation of the planets using round food items.  Every page relays the information in such a clear and accessible way.  My daughter often stands up on the couch and excitedly yells the facts back at us as we read it with her.  She really has a limited understanding of the information, but it'll come.  In the meantime, she still love, love, loves this book.

The pictures I've supplied do not do the book justice.  The graphic design throughout the book is astounding.  It's so well organized, especially considering the amount of information they cram in here.

The only problematic thing is that they really do include all facts, like animals sacrificed for science and the fact that the sun will explode one day and how if you get sucked into a black hole you'll turn into spaghetti.

I'm glad that they didn't skirt around these subjects, but it means that this might not be a good book for a very young, very anxious child.  Or you can just skip pages; that's what we do.

Where Does Electricity Come From?

 By Angelo Gangemi

Published by GS science

This book wasn't so good.  Electricity is complicated, and the target audience here is too young.  I don't really feel like I understand electricity, and this book really highlights the things that I don't understand.

 Spin a magnet and get electricity on the wires!  First of all, I don't really understand magnetism.  I understand THAT it works and HOW it works, but why?  It may as well be magic.

On a side note, I learned about magnets entirely in French, and we just called the iron filings "fer", which meant nothing to me at the time.  It was all very mysterious.

The book has a section on generators and batteries and all the basics, but each paragraph has about three to five simple sentences.  It just leaves so many questions.  And I end up having to try to answer them off the top of my head.

I was hoping this book would talk about the dangers of electricity, or how it works in the house, but it really did neither.

And then I thought about how I have a serious phobia of being electrocuted that I developed after years of sitting through the hydro presentations for kids that included slideshows of serious burns on young children.  So maybe my kids don't need to know about these things until they're much older.

Where does Bathwater Go?

 By Daisy Allyn
From the "Everyday Mysteries" series

This book was a perfect preschooler science book.  I've been searching for books that explain very simply how things work in the house.  More specifically, I'm looking for a book that explains electricity to toddlers, but I'm striking out there.

 The text is almost simple enough.  Sometimes I have to change a word or two, or expand on what they've said, but reading it word for word pretty much conveys everything that a three year old has the capacity to understand.

Most of the pictures are actual photographs, but the last picture is a diagram, which is basically the most interesting part of the book to my daughter.  She'll open the book to this page and just stare at the diagram and demand that I trace my fingers carefully along the arrows.

I'm hoping to find more science books at this level.

It Hurts When I Poop

 By Howard J. Bennett, M.D.
Illustrated by M.S. Weber

Yup.  We took out a potty book.  A very specific potty book about constipation.  This one is about a kid who purposely refuses to poop.  The difference between this kid and my kid is that this one is old enough to negotiate with his parents.

 The book is a story within a story.  Ryan goes to the doctor because he won't poop, and the doctor tells him a story about a coyote who won't clean his house.  And then explains that it's a metaphor.  That part went over my kid's head.

The actual good part is the one where they have diagrams and explain where poop comes from and where it goes.  It's very interesting for kids and might help you explain to them why it is SO important that they STOP HOLDING IT IN.

Reading this book wasn't a miracle cure, but I think it was good to help us talk about some of the problems we're having.  I think we just need to sneak prunes into the baby food and wait a few months before we have a serious chat about it again.

La Glace

 By Melvin and Gilda Berger

This is a really great book with some basic information about ice.  It's hard.  It's cold.  It can be thick.  It can be thin.

You think I'm being sarcastic, but there's very little to be negative about when the source material is interesting enough and the author decides not to embellish.

For more advanced readers, there's some more in depth information about ice written in bubbles inside the pictures.

This is currently my daughter's favourite book.  She seems to like non-fiction best.  I would like to find more in this series.  Damn Scholastic Books and their unnavigable website!

Your First Garden Book

 By Marc Brown

We have yet to start using this book.  I found it at my parents' house, and it's incredible.  It has all kinds of basic plant that kids can grow.  We should be able to start using it next spring.

 I actually like the pictures in this.  They're totally dated.  And it's full of terrible jokes and puns.

The gardening projects include planting parts of vegetables and fruits.  It even teaches you how to make your own peanut plant!

The book is divided by seasons and has recipes and other activities to pad it out.  It isn't a big book, but it's pretty packed with projects and information.  We should be able to use it for a few years.  I'm pretty stoked.

Friday Post - Moving Art on Netflix

 We rely on Netflix to entertain the kids, but we're still careful about how we watch TV with them.  Most importantly, they don't get to pick their shows on their own.  They have to pick from a small selection of things that we're willing to watch with them.

One of the shows that gets requested often and that we encourage is "Moving Art"

 Moving Art is a collection of nature videos with distorted time.  We like to watch the flower one most because we can name the flowers as we watch.  It's really calming to watch.  It's especially good if kids are sick or tired or grumpy.

The music that accompanies it is a sort of fake Phillip Glass.  I dislike Phillip Glass, and this music is pretty corny, but it works well for what the videos are trying to achieve.

Animal Hide and Seek

 By Dahlov Ipcar

This is another excellent Ipcar book.  The text is a little advanced.  We're just starting to read it properly.  As a picture book, though, it's great for kids under 3.

 This is a search and find book in green, orange and brown.  The animals are native to Maine, but we live in a similar climate and have most of the same animals living in our backyard.  The colours are dull, but accurate for the species presented as well as their habitat.

We all love this book.  My daughter gets so excited finding the animals.  Sure, lions and tigers and elephants are cool, but we see ducks and deer in our back yard all the time, so it's especially exciting to read a book about them.

A Butterfly is Patient

 By Dianna Hutts Aston and illustrated by Sylvia Long.

We picked this up at the library yesterday.  I picked it out, rather, because my daughter was mostly interested in running around the library.

I didn't look at it much until we got it home.  I found it in the non-fiction area, so I figured it couldn't be bad.  It's incredible.

 Yeah, the title is corny.  Yeah, that text rolling up is a bit much.  But the information in it is really great.  Everything you need to know about butterflies, using all the proper terminology, including the Latin terms and their translations.

 The descriptions are such that my two-and-a-half year old mostly understands it, but it isn't patronising.  I, personally, even found it interesting to read through.


The art is superb: colourful and detailed watercolours.  The pages are laid out in a clear and organized fashion.  Every butterfly, caterpillar and pupa is labeled.

I may end up purchasing this one when the kids are old enough to read it themselves.

www.chroniclebooks.com