Hello, Puddle! by Anita Sanchez
Ever wondered about the life of a puddle? What? You think it is empty? I thought so too, but then I read Hello, Puddle! by Anita Sanchez. Okay, I probably should not admit this but when I started reading, I thought, “That’s a small pond. The turtle is bigger than it!” Then, I went back and read “puddle” not “pond” in the title. But I can be forgiven (please) for thinking that as the puddle has a life as a mini pond. The tadpoles grow […]
The Pack by Amanda Cley
A Perfect Spot by Isabelle Simler
A surprise in the mail other day found its way to my desk. Two hardcover picture books from a publisher I do not remember asking for (but I am on publishers’ lists so it could be they cold-sent!) called The Pack by Amanda Cley and Cecilia Ferri and A Perfect Spot by Isabelle Simler. The Pack is spooky. Not in the usual sense of “creepy ghosts or goblins” but the tone is somber, and the sepia colors (with the hints of rare other colors just […]
Whirl by Deborah Kerbel
One hundred eighty-seven words are what the publisher description includes. If you wish to read about the title Whirl by Deborah Kerbel, this is your introduction. Yes, it deserves to be talked about, but I find it amusing that a wordless picture book (except for the description at the end about maple seeds) has that many words to describe it. The result of that description is to tell you the whole story. You do not get to experience it fresh. I was lucky enough to […]
Blast Off! How Mary Sherman Morgan Fueled America Into Space by Suzanne Slade
Another unsung hero who made it possible to touch the stars was Mary Morgan. And we see how Morgan was a girl who at age eight could not read/write but by the time she was an adult she was doing chemistry, making fuels for rockets and barely had a college education in Blast Off! How Mary Sherman Morgan Fueled America Into Space. Suzanne Slade shows how Morgan was not going to let “doing chores” hold her back, and she was not going to let the […]
The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack
Every beginning has an end, and every end has a beginning. For some of the more mundane everyday things around us, their existence from conception to completion is not too much of a mystery. However, things are not so straightforward when it comes to the cosmos. The universe may be one of the biggest and most complicated thing that we can conceptualise. So is it really that surprising that trying to understand both its beginning and it’s end is also big and complicated? I loved […]
The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb by Sam Kean
In the author’s note to The Bastard Brigade, Sam Kean responds to the question, why has he never written a book about physics before? His previous books (which are all fabulous and highly recommended by me) focus on genetics, chemistry, neuroscience, and the atmosphere, even though the author studied physics in college. He explains, “What I really love doing is telling stories, and when I’m planning a book, I look for rip-roarin’ stories first and foremost. I want heroes and villains, conflict and drama, plot twists […]
