Scholastic “Discover More”: Technology—How
Today’s Technology Really Works. By Clive Gifford. Scholastic. $15.99.
Scholastic “Discover More”: Night
Sky—Watching the Universe Outside Your Window. By Giles Sparrow.
Scholastic. $15.99.
The President’s Stuck in the
Bathtub: Poems about the Presidents. By Susan Katz. Illustrated by Robert
Neubecker. Clarion. $17.99.
Don’t Sit on the Baby: The
Ultimate Guide to Sane, Skilled, and Safe Babysitting. By Halley Bondy.
Zest Books. $12.99.
Amply illustrated with
outstanding photographs, tables, schematics, charts, and just about every
design element that can be brought to bear in book form, two new books in the Scholastic: “Discover More” series are
excellent introductions to their subject matter. Clive Gifford’s Technology is something of a technology wonder itself, for all the
fact that it belongs to the same basic words-on-dead-trees category as the
Gutenberg Bible. The book is packed with
statistical information (the number of digital music downloads rose 940%
between 2004 and 2009), history (Martin Cooper of Motorola led the team that
invented the first handheld cell phone in 1973), and fascinating information
tidbits (the first crash-test dummy was named Sierra Sam), Technology explains the inner (and sometimes outer) workings of
robots, electric guitars, game controllers, 3-D movies, cars, space
exploration, mountain bikes, human prostheses and more. General facts, step-by-step diagrams showing
each segment of a process, glossaries appropriate to individual topics,
diagrams that pull common objects apart to show how their parts interact, and
occasional offbeat photographic illustrations that show items from very unusual
angles are combined here to answer a whole series of intriguing questions:
“What’s so smart about smartphones?”
“Where are the world’s scariest roller coasters?” “Do Jet Skis use jet
engines?” “How do sneakers put an extra
spring in your step?” One of the best
things about Technology is that,
while it certainly simplifies complex processes, it does not shrink from
tackling even the most difficult scientific experiments, such as those being
done in the Large Hadron Collider beneath the French-Swiss border. Individual paragraphs are kept very short,
but there are constant cross-references that deepen readers’ understanding –
for example, a mention of handheld controllers refers to a page where their
workings are explained, and a reference to alternative energy sends readers to
pages discussing how wind, water and sunlight can be harnessed. Technology
is a fascinating gateway to a world that is increasingly becoming the world of the young readers at whom
the book is aimed – and of their parents, who will likely get as much from the
book as will its target audience.
Night Sky is an equally well-done introduction to its subject
matter. Among the questions addressed by
Giles Sparrow: “What will next be visible from Earth in 4530?” “Why does the sun have spots?” “Why did people believe there was life on
Mars?” “What’s on course to collide with
the Milky Way?” These are distinctive
and unusual questions through which to approach astronomy, even if some could be
slightly better worded: the reference should be to intelligent life on Mars, especially now that research indicates
the possibility of primitive life of some sort there (or at least having been
there in the past). Still, the book’s
factual accuracy and genuinely engaging graphics make it an exceptional
introduction to a subject that has been covered many times before. The “Strange Stars” illustration, for
example, contains a fascinating schematic diagram of a black hole, while the
pages on constellations do an excellent job of drawing the usual imaginary
connecting lines while also showing, on the same page, how the star patterns
really look – so readers can find them easily.
Among the especially attractive illustrations here is a series of four
views of the galaxy Centaurus A – one using visible light, one using X-rays,
one employing radio waves and one combined view. Star maps of the northern, southern and
equatorial skies, examples of stars of various colors, vivid pictorial
renditions of planets and moons, a gorgeous photo of the Milky Way as seen from
Réunion Island in the Indian
Ocean – these and many more elements combine to make Night Sky beautiful to look at as well as informative. This is a learning adventure that is also a
great deal of fun.
The President’s Stuck in the Bathtub is fun in a different way:
Susan Katz’s amusing poems and Robert Neubecker’s offbeat illustrations combine
to make politics seem a lot more enjoyable between book covers than it does in
the current round of presidential-election-year seriousness and
mudslinging. In fact, the mudslinging
dates back to the days of the second president, John Adams, who was mocked as
“His Rotundity” for his supposed devotion to British-style titles. Katz couples her poems with prose that gives
additional interesting information on each chief executive. For Andrew Jackson, for example, the poem
points out that “he kept the Congress under his thumb./ He couldn’t spel rite,
but he wasn’t dum.” The prose mentions
that Jackson was “reported to have claimed that a person who could spell a word
only one way lacked imagination.” The
facts on the less-known presidents are often the most intriguing ones: Martin
Van Buren was nicknamed “The Little Magician” because of his political
cleverness; John Tyler so angered his political party, the Whigs, that the
members voted unanimously to oust him; Millard Fillmore is pictured with his
face obscured by a cloud because he “is always forgotten;/ they call him
obscure./ Isn’t that rotten?” And then
there are Franklin Pierce, the first president to decorate a Christmas tree in
the White House; James Buchanan, whose dog mimicked his habit of tilting his
head to one side to favor one eye over the other; Rutherford B. Hayes, who had
the first telephone installed in the White House; Grover Cleveland, who was
known as “His Obstinacy” for his determination to re-take the presidency after
losing his bid for a second consecutive term – a quest at which he was successful, becoming the
only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms. As for the president who got stuck in the
bathtub: that was 350-pound William Howard Taft, for whom a new tub – big
enough for four ordinary-sized men – had to be built after the mishap. Packed with trivia that effectively humanize
presidents and the presidency, The
President’s Stuck in the Bathtub is enjoyable in itself, and can also help
get young readers interested in the (alas, far from amusing) workings of
modern-day American politics.
In fact, young readers
are more likely to be involved in babysitting than political endeavors, and
that is where Don’t Sit on the Baby
comes in. The main distinguishing
feature of Halley Bondy’s guidebook is that it does not stop after the first
two sections, “Babysitting Breakdown” and “Essential Skills,” but goes on to a
third, “Business Basics.” It is in that
third section that readers will find advice too often missing from guidebooks
to teen and young-adult life: deciding how much to charge (“Negotiating can be
nerve-racking, but if you ask nicely and have convincing arguments, it just
might work”); knowing your rights and obligations (the right to a safe
environment while on the job, the obligation to keep the kids safe while they
are under your care); updating the parents (tell them both the good stuff and
the not-so-good stuff, with the good stuff first); and more. The earlier sections of the book explain how
to structure play by age range, cook for picky kids (sample recipes are
included), deal with diapers and potty training, help with homework, and
discipline without having to call the parents (although that is an acceptable
last resort). There is serious material
here, such as learning the signs of child abuse, balanced with amusing “Tales
from the Crib” that give various babysitters’ experiences, such as the
40-minute adventure that led to creation of chunky-peanut-butter sandwiches on
triangle-shaped bread. Don’t Sit on the Baby is a short book
(128 pages) and an easy-to-read one, so it should not strain teens’ attention
spans too much. But it is so packed with
useful information and helpful tips from people who have done their share of
babysitting – and survived the experience, sometimes even thriving on it – that
readers may want to take it along on babysitting jobs to consult it for advice
when things get a little too hectic and perhaps just a tad more difficult to
manage than anyone expected.
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