Oceans: Making Waves! Created
by Simon Basher. Written by Dan Green. Kingfisher. $8.99.
No Regrets Parenting: Turning
Long Days and Short Years into Cherished Moments with Your Kids. By Harley
A. Rotbart, M.D. Andrews McMeel. $14.99.
The Basher Science
books continue to present potentially difficult information in a clear and
articulate way that, if it does not necessarily make learning fun, certainly
makes it easier than it would otherwise be.
Oceans is the latest example
of a typical Basher design that personalizes natural forces and animals while
presenting them with a touch of anime and a touch of attitude. Chapters here have titles such as “Ocean
Motion,” “Reef Chillin’” and “Frosty Fellows,” and single-page explanations of
individual topics pack in more information than would seem possible. For example, the page on Sponge (part of
“Reef Chillin’”) has a smiling yellow character saying, “Chillax, dude! I keep things cool by not being overly
complicated.” The dialogue contains some
information of its own: “I also have an awesome superpower – I can regenerate
my body if it gets chopped into pieces.”
And there are three brief facts above the drawing (one of which is, “Has
no stomach, so filters food from the water through pores”), plus three
hard-science pieces of information below the illustration (one says, “Volume of
water filtered by a sponge per day: up to 20,000 times its own volume”). The presentation helps the information go
down more easily without shortchanging the facts – yes, they are presented in
compressed form, but always accurately. Porpoise
and Dolphin appear in the “Open-water Crew” section, for example, with a note
that a superpod of the animals is one with more than 1,000 members. The Tripod Fish, among the “Deep-down
Dandies,” is “almost blind but sensitive to pressure and touch” and lives “on
the sea floor at depths of up to 18,400 ft. (5,600m).” Kids will likely be attracted first and
foremost to the words being “spoken” by the animals and other things presented
here. In “Frosty Fellows,” for example,
the Ice Shelf says, “A cold shoulder is all you’ll get if you nestle up to me,”
while Krill comment, “Life is tough when you’re snack food for half the animals
in the ocean.” But the pages are small
enough, the type sizes large enough, and the illustrations attractive enough to
keep young learners interested after they finish enjoying the comments and are
ready to move on to something meatier.
Or fishier, as the case may be.
Basher Books are certainly introductory – Oceans is intended for ages 10 and up, but probably not very far up
– but they make a fine gateway to more in-depth scientific study.
Every parent knows
that raising a child is more art than science, but there are certainly plenty
of books out there attempting to make the experience more organized and
efficient than it usually is. A lot of
them succeed only in making parents feel bad for not attaining the authors’
ideal (no word whether the authors involved ever attain it themselves). No
Regrets Parenting takes a different approach: pediatric specialist Harley
A. Rotbart points out that in addition to being “among the greatest sources of
human joy,” raising children “is also the single greatest cause of guilt and
worry.” His aim is to raise the joy
level and reduce the worry element. He
is earnest about this to a sometimes overdone degree, as when he writes about
homework help, “This is a tricky one. You already went through third grade yourself;
now it’s your child’s turn… Homework checking time is a wonderful opportunity
to sit close to your child, maybe while he’s in pajamas and maybe with a cup of
cocoa, and provide positive reinforcement for a job well done – or constructive
advice on how to do it better tomorrow night.”
This is a trifle naïve, assuming as it does that homework gets done
before a reasonable bedtime hour and that the parent is not utterly exhausted
from his or her own job, with barely the strength to lift a cup to his or her
lips, much less fill it with cocoa. The
intention is certainly good, though; in fact, all the intentions here are
good. Take “Family Movie Night.” Rotbart says that “finding movies that are
appropriate and enjoyable for everyone in the family” can be a major cultural
challenge, then suggests that “picking the right movie becomes another chance
to spend precious moments with your kids,” and then says to involve the kids
themselves in the selections and make sure that everyone watches together even
if some family members end up seeing films they cannot stand. Uh, right.
OK, Rotbart says no cell phones are allowed at movie times (just as in
theaters), and parents should make popcorn and grab snacks for everyone before
a film begins, but is it really realistic to expect an easily scared child to
sit through even a mild modern horror film, or someone who loves smash-bang
action movies to sit quietly through an intimate domestic drama? Parents will certainly learn something by
trying to arrange these movie times with and for their kids, but the lesson may
not be one of togetherness. No Regrets Parenting gets a (+++) rating
for its good ideas and straightforward presentation, and for making an attempt
to have readers feel good about themselves and their families instead of
believing they cannot possibly live up to some unreasonable ideal. The book does, however, call for the creation
of scenarios that are, for a lot of families, improbable if not
impossible. Many things in the book are
worth trying, but it remains up to parents to reassure themselves that there is
nothing wrong with them or their children if Rotbart’s well-meaning ideas
simply do not work because of particular family circumstances.
No comments:
Post a Comment