About the Book: Meet Fisher Bas: 12 years-old, growth-stunted, a geeky science genius, and son of the Nobel Prize-winning creators of the Bas-Hermaphrodite-Sea-Slug-Hypothesis. No surprise: Fisher isn’t exactly the most popular kid in his middle-school, tormented daily by the beefy, overgrown goons he calls The Vikings. But he senses relief when he comes upon the idea […]
Reading Connection: The Power of Audio Books by Tasha Seegmiller
About the Book: Eleanor “Groovy” Robinson loves cooking and plans to go to culinary school just as soon as she’s old enough. But even Groovy’s thoughtfully-planned menus won’t fix the things that start to go wrong the year she turns eleven–suddenly, her father is in jail, her best friend’s long-absent mother reappears, and the swallows that […]
Science Connection: Feed the Birds
I thought I’d mix it up a little by reviewing a great science album for kids, Here Comes Science by They Might Be Giants. If you’re like me, you remember They Might Be Giants from the days when they were recording songs like Istanbul for adults. Now they have several albums for kids that are fun, educational, and often […]
About the Book: Eddy Thomas can read a college physics book, but he can’t read the emotions on the faces of his classmates at Drayton Middle School. He can spend hours tinkering with an invention, but he can’t stand more than a few minutes in a noisy crowd, like the crowd at the science fair, which […]
Science Connection: Elemental ornaments, aka gumdrop molecules
About the Book: As day breaks in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, a wounded mountain lion limps toward a Papago Indian hut. The lion fears people, but today he is desperately hungry. And he has caught the scent of Birdwing and her mother. Then a loud thunderclap warns Birdwing, the mountain lion, and all the creatures […]
Science Connection: Desert Animal Olympics
About the Book:B95 can feel it: a stirring in his bones and feathers. It’s time. Today is the day he will once again cast himself into the air, spiral upward into the clouds, and bank into the wind.He wears a black band on his lower right leg and an orange flag on his upper left, […]
Science Connection: Bird Behavior Scavenger Hunt by Kate Grandison
About the Book: A puzzling art theft is solved by two sixth-grade sleuths in a first-rate first novel by Blue Balliett, illustrated by Series of Unfortunate Events artist Brett Helquist. Cut from similar cloth to The Da Vinci Code while harkening back to E. L. Konigsburg and Agatha Christie, Balliett’s book follows young Petra Andalee and Calder Pillay […]
Art Activity: Modern-Day Vermeer