Sue Heavenrich's Blog, page 3

BLOG TOUR: Good Night, Oppy!

Good Night, Oppy!  by James McGowan; illus. by Graham Carter 32 pages; ages 4-8‎Boyds Mills Press, 2021 
theme: Mars, exploration
Opportunity loved her job. 
Opportunity was one of two rovers sent to explore Mars. She and her sister, Spirit, landed on the planet in January, 2004. In his book, McGowan endows Oppy with the voice to describe the Mars mission in her own words. And he shows how hard she worked, navigating more than 28 miles over the uneven and rocky Martian surface. She sledded down hills into craters, discovered minerals, and searched for proof of ancient watery environments. Through the marvels of NASA technology, Oppy talked with her scientists and engineers. The original mission was for 90 days, but Oppy kept on going, and going, and going for fifteen years – until a huge dust storm prevented her from recharging her solar batteries. 
What I like about this book: The story is fun, and both author and illustrator give Oppy real personality. I like how Oppy is presented as an explorer, on the trail of discovery. Though a work of fiction, each page contains an additional layer of factual text filled with details to help answer questions young listeners are sure to come up with.  
Yes! There is Back Matter! In the author’s note, McGowan shares some of the history of the real Oppy and reminds readers that there are two more rovers actively exploring the planet. And there are photos ~ some of Oppy’s “postcards from Mars.”
Beyond the Books:
Learn more about the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity . You can find out more here, here, and here. 
Make your own rover out of cardboard . Here’s how.
Pretend you are a rover. Draw a picture of what you think you would see on Mars . Then check out some of these “postcards” of images from Opportunity.
Head over to Archimedes Notebook to discover more new books about Mars and space exploration. 

Make sure to visit the other stops on the Blog Tour
Today we're joining Perfect Picture Book Friday, an event where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Avocado in Search of Self

Avocado Asks  by Momoko Abe 32 pages; ages 3-7Doubleday Books for Young Readers, 2021 
theme: imagination, identity
Avocado was feeling just fine in the fruit and vegetable aisle of the supermarket.
At least he was until a kid asked whether he was a fruit or a vegetable. Avocado didn’t know the answer! So Avocado did what any other item in the produce section would do: set off in search of his identity. Was Avocado a Vegetable?No, said the veggies.Was Avocado a fruit?You’re not sweet like us, they answered.
What I like about this book: I love, love, love when Avocado’s “insides felt like they were turning to guacamole.” I love how Avocado searches for identity amongst the lentils and eggs, fish and cheeses. And I love the tomato skulking around in the background. But most of all I love the fun language Momoko Abe uses to show how Avocado feels.

Beyond the Books:
Take a trip to a grocery store. Notice how the produce is displayed. Where is Avocado?
Check out the book trailer here.
Did you know you can make brownies using avocados ? Well, I didn’t either. But here are a whole bunch of ways to enjoy avocados. So ask Avocado over for lunch!
Today we're joining Perfect Picture Book Friday, an event where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Reviewed from a library copy.

Beach Reading!

We're taking a summer break. As much as I'd like to head to the beach, the only thing nearby is a sandy bit of shore along a lake where seagulls wheel overhead. There are no waves, no hermit crabs, no tidepools. What we do have, though, is a library system filled with books about the beach. Books that can take us to the shore even if  we just spend summer dabbling toes in a wading pool, building sand castles in the sandbox, or swinging on a hammock strung beneath shady trees. 

So I'm packing up my beach bag with library books and heading out to read... see you in September!  

Two Books Explore Life Under Hitler

Two books about life under Hitler came out earlier this year. At the time, I was busy reading escapist stories of adventure, fantasy, and science fiction – you know, typical pandemic fare. But this spring I dug through my book basket and plucked these two out to read. 
Ensnared in the Wolf's Lair: Inside the 1944 Plot to Kill Hitler and the Ghost Children of His Revenge  by Ann Bausum‎144 pages; ages 10-14National Geographic Kids, 2021
Anne Frank wasn’t the only one writing in her diary in 1944. Sometime during the summer of that year, “a 12-year-old German girl named Christa von Hofacker picked up her pen and began to write in her own diary.” Like Anne Frank, Christa wrote to try to make sense of her world. Her father was entangled in an assassination attempt against Hitler, deemed a traitor, and vanished into the Nazi criminal court system. Days later Gestapo agents took away her mother and older brother and sister. And then it was Christa’s turn to be uprooted – sent on a three-day, 500-mile journey to a youth retreat center. Now it was a detention center for children of German men and women who were resisting Hitler’s regime. The overseers took away family photos and were given new names. They weren’t allowed to enroll in local schools, attend church, or visit the nearby community. Instead they were hidden and denied outside contact.
In this book, Ann Bausum explores Hitler’s rise to power, the German resistance attempts to limit that power, and his demise. During the first part of the book, she shows how easy it was for Hitler to control the message and reality of what people heard and saw. His regime was built on lies and fears. But a few brave people, some in his government, worked to overthrow him. When that attempt failed, Hitler not only went after members of the resistance, but also their families and children. 
A great mix of history, adventure, and insight into how a charismatic fascist leader can create a world of alternate facts. “…he connected with people on an emotional level that made it easy for them to dismiss logical counterarguments … his message was simple and it was compelling: You’ve been wronged, and I can make things right.” Serious, but essential reading for this time.

I Survived the Nazi Invasion, 1944 (graphic novel)by Lauren Tarshis; illus. by Álvaro Sarraseca 160 pages; ages 8-12Graphix (Scholastic), 2021
It’s been two months since the Nazis have taken papa away, and now Max and his sister, Zena, are on their own. They live in a Jewish ghetto in Poland, and are hungry. When Max sneaks under the fence to gather berries, he’s spotted by a guard and marched back into camp. When his sister is threatened, Max makes a lunge, a gun goes off, and chaos ensues – but Max and Zena run for the forest. They meet Jewish resistance fighters who take them to a safe camp, but soon grenades are exploding, planes are flying overhead, and soldiers are marching through the woods.
The story is told through comic panels, with text and dialog. It gets information and emotion across with a minimum of words, leaving plenty of room for a reader to imagine.

Thanks for dropping by today. On Monday we'll be hanging out at Marvelous Middle Grade Monday with other  bloggers. It's over at Greg Pattridge's blog, Always in the Middle, so hop over to see what other people are reading. Review copies provided by the publishers.

What if you Found a Thingity-Jig?

The Thingity-Jig  by Kathleen Doherty; illus. by Kristyna Litten 32 pages; ages 4-8Peachtree, 2021   
theme: mystery, fun, invention
One night, under the light of a silvery moon, all of Bear’s friends were deep asleep.
But not Bear. He wandered about tapping, poking, and sniffing things until he found a Thingity-Jig! It was bouncy! So Bear decides to take it home – but he needs something to pull it or drag it or roll it home. So he builds that thing, and then realizes he needs help lifting the Thingity-Jig onto his contraption to carry it home. But no one will help, so Bear builds a lifter-upper.
What I like about this book: I love the language! Smack. Wallop. Whack. That’s the sound of Bear building something. He clinks and clanks, fiddles and whittles… until he’s built a rolly thing, a lifter-upper thing, and other things with fun-to-say names that describe their function.
I love that Bear invents Rube-Goldberg-type things to help get the job done. I love that he runs into problems trying to get the Thingity-Jig back to his home. I love that Kathleen Doherty puts the best, most fun words to say into her text. I love that I actually have a Thingity-Jig at my house, and my kids used it in much the same way Bear does. 

Beyond the Books:
Bear has to move a huge Thingity-Jig and has no one to help him . So he invents a way to move it. Design and – if you can – build your own thingity-jig mover. Raid the recycling bin for materials, put old wagons into use, think about pulleys and rope. But mostly, have fun!
Build a crazy contraption . Need ideas? Check out this video.
We’ll join Perfect Picture Book Friday once they resume. It’s a wonderful gathering where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Gardening is More Fun with Friends

Nina Soni, Master of the Garden by Kashmira Sheth; illus. by Jenn Kocsmiersky 192 pages; ages 7-10‎Peachtree Publishing Company, 2021
It’s “take a daughter to work” day, and fourth-grader Nina is going to work with mom, who is a landscape architect. They are going to build a garden – raised beds. Little sister, Kavita has been working on a picture of a garden plan for a week. Nina, a list-maker, has yet to start. One of the things I like in this book is that we see Nina’s lists – even when they’re in her head. Occasionally there are text-boxes, as though Nina is explaining something, such as what a word means, to her sister.
Before the first boards are nailed together, Nina is thinking how they can sell extra veggies to earn money. She’s even got a plan. It involves her friend, Jay and Kavita, but when is the right time to tell them?
The plants start growing and everything is going well until…A rabbit eats Nina’s chard. All of it.Slugs! Yuck.Japanese beetles nibble plants.And the birds are attacking the beans.As a gardener currently engaged in hostilities with a woodchuck (he ate Every. Single. Sunflower!) I liked that author Kashmira Sheth does not spare her young gardeners from the realities of beasts and bugs. I love how she brings readers into Nina’s family life – I can almost smell the cheesy-methi parathas toasting in the kitchen. And I really like that Kashmira includes some Q&A at the back-of-the-book, where she talks about her inspiration and why it is important for readers to be exposed to diverse books written by people who share those diverse identities. Full disclosure: Kashmira was one of the instructors for the Highlights Foundation workshop on “writing chapter books” that I took last summer. Because of Covid-19 it was a remote class; I know we would have had many fun discussions about gardening around the lunch tables had it been in-person.
Thanks for dropping by today. On Monday we'll be hanging out at Marvelous Middle Grade Monday with other  bloggers. It's over at Greg Pattridge's blog, Always in the Middle, so hop over to see what other people are reading. Review copy provided by the publisher.

When it's Hot Enough to Fry an Egg on the Sidewalk...

 

This book was published three years ago, but because of the heat wave in the northeast, it seems like a perfect pick for today. It got so hot in Oregon that roads buckled and Portland shut off the streetcars because heat was melting the cables. Scorching temperatures soared to 116 F in some places – hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk!
Iqbal and His Ingenious Idea: How a Science Project Helps One Family and the Planet  by Elizabeth Suneby; illus. by Rebecca Green 32 pages; ages 5-10‎Kids Can Press, 2018
theme: STEM, sustainability, problem-solving
Iqbal lives in Bangladesh and it’s the monsoon, when “gusts of rain whip across your face and make you squint your eyes.” At home, Iqbal’s mother cooks the meals over an indoor fire. The smoke irritates her lungs, causing her and the baby to cough.
Iqbal wants to win the prize at the science fair so he can use the prize money to buy his mother a gas cookstove. He’s got a month to come up for a project that fits with the theme of sustainability.
What I like about this book: This is a fun story to read, while broaching a serious topic at the same time. We see Iqbal trying to come up with ideas. He sketches gadgets with gears, he conceives of contraptions, he dreams of devices. Could he build a smokeless cooker? With help from his teacher, they get ideas from the internet, and Iqbal designs a solar cooker from things most people have in his village: broken umbrellas. He lines his umbrella with foil, borrows a soot-blackened cookpot, and is ready to test his stove. All he needs is a sunny day to test it.
Beyond the Books:
Can you really fry an egg on the sidewalk? Probably not. Eggs need to reach a temperature of 158 F to cook through – hard to do on a white surface. A better idea would be to fry an egg on the hood of a car sitting under the hot sun (remember: eggs will run, and car hoods are curved). One Arizona girl had a brilliant idea: put the greenhouse effect to use and fry an egg inside a car on a hot day. You can watch her video here. It’s also a good reminder of why you don’t leave pets – or people – inside cars.
Make your own solar cooker. Here’s how to turn a pizza box into a solar oven, and here’s how to turn any kind of box into a cooker.  You can also use an old umbrella and lots of shiny foil, like Iqbal. A good test is to use your oven to make s’mores.
We’ll join Perfect Picture Book Friday once they resume. It’s a wonderful gathering where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copy found on the library shelves.

Layla and the Bots return ... to make CUPCAKES!

Cupcake Fix (Layla and the Bots #3)  by Vicky Fang; illus. by Christine Nishiyama 80 pages; ages 5-7Scholastic (Branches), 2021
I love books that incorporate STEAM elements in an organic way. So, when Vicky told the STEAM Team group that she had a new Layla & the Bots coming out this summer, I could not wait to read it. Fortunately for me, Vicky sent me an arc to satisfy my STEM-y sweet tooth.
Layla is a rock star, performing in a band with her bots. She is also an inventor, and in each book in the series, she uses her engineering and technical know-how to solve a problem. In this book she’s invited to perform at the community center grand opening. But the people in charge of the event are worried they won’t get the crowd they’re hoping for.
Food always brings people together. But what kind of food? Layla decides she needs a survey. 
What I like about this: a survey is a great way to collect information (data). But it’s not useful unless you have a way to analyze that information. So we get to see Layla graph survey results. This is cool – and is something any kid old enough to read this book can do. Heck, my kids were collecting data and graphing M&M colors at this age. (“Mom… we need another bag of M&Ms!”)
Once they discover that folks like cupcakes, the obvious next-step is to design and build a machine that bakes cupcakes and frosts them. 

The machine works! But… the first person to test it asks it to do something unexpected. And that causes problems which must be fixed before the grand opening. The clock is ticking … can Layla and the Bots debug the code and fix the machine in time?
Another thing I like: The problem that’s posed is how to build a machine that allows for personal choice in the baking, frosting, and decorating of cupcakes. Maybe it will get some kids wondering how decisions are made.
And – at the back there’s a Build Your Own activity. Not a cupcake machine – that would be too hard! But a fun extendable grabber arm.
On Wednesday I chatted with Vicky about why she’s so keen on integrating technology, engineering, and coding in her kid’s stories. Check it out at the GROG blog.
Thanks for dropping by today. On Monday we’ll be hanging out at Marvelous Middle Grade Monday with other  bloggers. It's over at Greg Pattridge’s blog, Always in the Middle, so hop over to see what other people are reading. Review ARC provided by the author.

Homer on the Case

 

Homer on the Case  by Henry Cole 144 pages; ages 8-12Peachtree, 2021
After meeting Homer, you’ll never look at pigeons the same way again. Sure, he’s a homing pigeon – but he’s a homing pigeon who’s taught himself to read. What? You think pigeons can’t read? You’d be wrong… back in 2016 a scientist demonstrated that pigeons can recognize words. And they can do math, too.
Unlike lab pigeons, Homer taught himself to read by using the Dick Tracy comics and local news in the papers used to line his cage. So when people start losing jewelry in the park, Homer reflects on what Dick Tracy would do. He observes, watches, trains his mind to remember the traits of suspects.
The crime spree gets personal when Otto’s grandfather loses his gold pocket watch. Fortunately, Homer has friends who can help – an Amazon parrot named Lulu and a park pigeon named Carlos. With advice from Dick Tracy, Homer and Lulu crack the case. Now all they need to do is get their humans to climb down the storm drain into the underground tunnels. There’s just one small problem: Homer and Lulu need to figure out a way to communicate with their humans. 
What I like about this book: There are heroes and villains – but even the bad guys aren’t all bad. And the ways Homer tries to get messages to his human, Otto, are … creative. Just take a minute to think about how you might communicate something important to another species if you don’t speak the same language – and they think of you as a “cute pet.”
This is a great book for kids who like animal stories, for kids who like STEM, for bird-lovers of all feathers, and for kids who believe that comic book superheroes have wisdom to share.
Thanks for dropping by today. On Monday we'll be hanging out at Marvelous Middle Grade Monday with other  bloggers. It's over at Greg Pattridge's blog, Always in the Middle, so hop over to see what other people are reading. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Catching up on picture books

 
These picture books somehow managed to evade review over the past year, and I’m not sure how. After all, the book basket isn’t that big! Both were published by Chronicle in 2020.
theme: family, friendship, read-aloud

For the youngest listeners (from 3-5): Mabel: A Mermaid Fable , by Rowboat Watkins 
What was weird about Mabel wasn’t her mustache.
Turns out her entire family had mustaches. Nope, having a mustache wasn’t the problem. NOT having one was! Poor Mabel. She tried to make a mustache out of everything she could think of – but no luck. And then she meets a friend – an octopus named Lucky who fit his name except for one thing… he didn’t have eight legs. That didn’t matter to Mabel. They had fun together, playing and exploring and doing the things friends do.
What I like about this book: The idea of mustaches on merfolk is funny, the problem with being the odd one out isn’t. I love Mabel’s attempts at creating a mustache, and her easy acceptance of Lucky. And I love the illustrations. But I mostly love the way she learns to accept herself. 
Oh, and I love the nudibranchs, too.

For the “older” crowd (5-8): Everyone’s Awake , by Colin Meloy; illus, by Shawn Harris 
The crickets are all peeping.
It’s time for folks to be sleeping, but in this house, Everyone’s Awake! Dad is baking bread. The mice are playing cards. Mom’s tap-dancing and brother’s juggling kitchen plates.
What I like about this book: It’s fun to read aloud, with rhymes and humorous happenings. The pages are bright, with simple, bold illustrations. And as the night goes on, the attempts to stay awake get crazier and crazier.
Beyond the Books:
You may not find any mermaids in the ocean, but you will find nudibranchs, or sea slugs. Learn more about them here. The photos are stunning.
If you’re planning to stay awake all night, make sure you have some games to play . Here are six games and all you need is one deck of cards.
Today we're joining Perfect Picture Book Friday, an event where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copies provided by the publisher.