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Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science, Stage 2
Energy Makes Things Happen
Read and find out about energy in this colorfully illustrated nonfiction picture book. Did you know that energy comes from the food you eat? From the sun and wind? From fuel and heat? You get energy every time you eat. You transfer energy to other things every time you play baseball. In this book, you can find out all the ways you and everyone on earth need energy to make things happen. This clear and appealing science book for early elementary age kids, both at home and in the classroom, is a Level 2 Let's-Read-and-Find-Out, which means the book explores more challenging concepts for children in the primary grades. The 100+ titles in this leading nonfiction series are: Top 10 reasons to love LRFOs: Books in this series support the Common Core Learning Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, and the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) standards. Let's-Read-and-Find-Out is the winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books & Films Prize for Outstanding Science Series.
40 pages, Paperback
First published December 24, 2002
4 people are currently reading
156 people want to read
About the author
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
25 books2,866 followersKimberly Brubaker Bradley's next book, The Night War, will be published April 9, 2024. She is the author of nineteen previous books, including the Newbery Honor winners Fighting Words and The War that Saved My Life. The sequel to the latter, The War I Finally Won, appeared on many state-award and best-books lists and was described as “stunning” by The Washington Post and “honest” and “daring” by The New York Times. She is also the acclaimed author of She Persisted: Rosalind Franklin. Kimberly and her husband have two grown children and live with their dogs, two highly opinionated mares, and a surplus of cats on a fifty-two-acre farm in Bristol, Tennessee. Visit her at kimberlybrubakerbradley.com.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
April 18, 2017
Perfect for our study of heat and light in 3rd grade.
June 17, 2013
I've always loved this set of science books and it is a legacy to it's founder Dr. Franklyn M. Bradley, that it is still going strong over 50 years after he started it. This book is very well written in an engaging style. While obviously covering a wide range of topics briefly at only 33 pages it can only touch upon the topic but it manages to set a firm foundation. I'm particularly pleased with how well the book goes about relating how all energy can be related back to the sun from giving a variety of very different examples such as a rock rolling down a hill to the more obvious milk we drink from the table. At the end of the book there is even a "game" challenging you to try to trace anything that uses energy back to the sun. Fun! The artwork is nice. Meisel has created large groupings of multi-ethnic children that look natural and are not even noticeable that he made a conscious effort to do so. Of course publisher's ask for this sort of thing but Meislel's work is completely natural, with the ethnic groups being complete examples of real-life. I like how he made red-heads prominent as well. Good serious book in the series.
November 8, 2019
I chose Energy Making Things Happen for my favorites shelf because it has fantastic illustrations to connect students' real life experiences to the text. These drawings are lively, detailed, engaging, and filled with diverse cultural experiences. This book could be read to any elementary grades (K-5), but for independent reading purposes, it is geared more towards upper elementary. The plot is all centered on energy and the fact that it is all around us. It is what we exert, it's what powers cars, the sun, electricity, etc.
I think this is a great book to implement into the reading classroom because the teacher could teach vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and potentially use it as an intro to a science lesson. Energy, fuel, transfer, and natural gas are all vocabulary terms you could incorporate into a science lesson or just to teach in general for natural/earth science. Once students in the upper grades have these vocabulary terms down, they could read this book on their own and their fluency could be assessed. There are a lot of illustrations in this book to keep students engaged, however; the pages have thick text passages.
I think this is a great book to implement into the reading classroom because the teacher could teach vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and potentially use it as an intro to a science lesson. Energy, fuel, transfer, and natural gas are all vocabulary terms you could incorporate into a science lesson or just to teach in general for natural/earth science. Once students in the upper grades have these vocabulary terms down, they could read this book on their own and their fluency could be assessed. There are a lot of illustrations in this book to keep students engaged, however; the pages have thick text passages.
October 1, 2020
I would use this book for grades 1st-3rd. It explains scientific concepts in terms that are both interesting and understandable. It focuses on the exploration of the broad concept of energy. The author uses examples of different types of energy, introduces the concepts of storage and transference of energy, and then covers various aspects of energy: wind, types of fuels, food, solar power, and the formation of fossil fuels. Two final pages, set in a smaller type size, offer suggestions for simple experiments using toy cars and a reasoning game thinking of the origins of energy sources. Energy is one of the most challenging topics to teach in the elementary classroom because of the complex nature of the concepts involved. I would have students think and write of ways they use energy in everyday life. To further explore the concept, I would have them brainstorm what it would be like without energy.
December 1, 2025
This is a great book for the young children in your life. The best part about this book would have to be the very vivid illustrations that it presents to show readers about energy. There is a good amount of equal gender and cultural representation across the entire book. The book does a very good job of providing explicit examples of how different forms of energy operate. It discusses kinetic energy, heat energy, wind energy, and fossil fuels. This story also does a very great job of talking about other energy-related topics such as energy transfer and the law of conservation of energy. Overall, this book would be very great for the young child in your life who is looking to learn more about energy, or even has too much energy themselves!
March 13, 2017
*First read when I was a kid*
This was a sweet book to introduce kids to the idea of energy. The pictures were cute and attention-grabbing, and the book goes over both how we usually think of energy (renewable and nonrenewable sources), and other sources that energy isn't always thought of as coming from (food and how they power us). It goes into the basic concepts that we don't always think about but still affect us every day, and kids can get a jump start on going beyond those ideas.
3.5 stars.
This was a sweet book to introduce kids to the idea of energy. The pictures were cute and attention-grabbing, and the book goes over both how we usually think of energy (renewable and nonrenewable sources), and other sources that energy isn't always thought of as coming from (food and how they power us). It goes into the basic concepts that we don't always think about but still affect us every day, and kids can get a jump start on going beyond those ideas.
3.5 stars.
June 11, 2025
Enegy Makes Things happen was pretty intresting and suspenseful.Everywhere in the whole wide wworld there`s energy.without energy we wouldn`t be alive. If you push a rock down the hill it can hurt somebody,so having too much energy is bad.I didin`t really like the book becauseit had poor transitions.I recommend this book to kids that like nonfiction books
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June 19, 2017
an interesting way to introduce energy to children. I wish it would use the actual scientific terms, but I guess I can't be too picky. it's great at descriptions.
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January 29, 2023You could just as easily say that energy makes things stop
October 1, 2023
Good that it talks about the conservation of energy
October 7, 2008
The title of this book is Energy Makes things Happen. The author is Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. This book has not received any awards.
This book gives the in's and out's when talking about energy. The book basically tells how energy is all around us. The sun gives off energy and everything uses the suns energy. The cars we drive are exerting energy. When we bounce a ball we are giving our energy to the ball and then the ball has energy to bounce off the ground. The book has good visual pictures and this book would really help the reader learn about what energy does and how it affects us, like when we eat something, we take that foods energy and our bodies use it. This is a helpful book that I wish I had when I was younger because the first time I learned about energy was in my PS126 class at Washburn. I knew what it was but I didn't think about it from a physics standpoint, which this book does.
Activities:
1.) Have various balls in the room and take them outside to give the students some hands on activities with the balls. The teacher can show the students how a ball will bounce when the teacher puts forth very little energy and how it will bounce when full energy is givin. The students can try and will come to a consensus that a ball will only bounce as high as the energy you give it.
2.) The teacher will have the students make a list of how they get energy and how they exert energy throughout the day. An example of them using energy would be eating cereal in the morning and an example of them expending energy would be running on the playground.
This book gives the in's and out's when talking about energy. The book basically tells how energy is all around us. The sun gives off energy and everything uses the suns energy. The cars we drive are exerting energy. When we bounce a ball we are giving our energy to the ball and then the ball has energy to bounce off the ground. The book has good visual pictures and this book would really help the reader learn about what energy does and how it affects us, like when we eat something, we take that foods energy and our bodies use it. This is a helpful book that I wish I had when I was younger because the first time I learned about energy was in my PS126 class at Washburn. I knew what it was but I didn't think about it from a physics standpoint, which this book does.
Activities:
1.) Have various balls in the room and take them outside to give the students some hands on activities with the balls. The teacher can show the students how a ball will bounce when the teacher puts forth very little energy and how it will bounce when full energy is givin. The students can try and will come to a consensus that a ball will only bounce as high as the energy you give it.
2.) The teacher will have the students make a list of how they get energy and how they exert energy throughout the day. An example of them using energy would be eating cereal in the morning and an example of them expending energy would be running on the playground.
September 18, 2010
There is nothing bad about this book, it's just not all that good. I couldn't help be note how exceptional the Robert E. Wells books truly are in comparison.
I found myself somewhat confused by this book. Whatever simple nuggets I was supposed to pick up (beyond energy is in everything and energy makes things happen) were lost is a swath of text. The illustrations were engaging, but the mantra that energy is everywhere didn't seem to illuminate either me or my child. If you want to teach the single concept that energy is everything, this might be a good library check out.
I found myself somewhat confused by this book. Whatever simple nuggets I was supposed to pick up (beyond energy is in everything and energy makes things happen) were lost is a swath of text. The illustrations were engaging, but the mantra that energy is everywhere didn't seem to illuminate either me or my child. If you want to teach the single concept that energy is everything, this might be a good library check out.
October 3, 2013
I really like this book. Its is still very child friendly with all of the colorful illustrations demonstrating the different ways energy works. Its great if I was teaching my class a unit on science and they could use the book to show them how they can "make their own energy" and go and practice it themselves on the playground during outside time with various materials or we could have a specific center where we have the book and a pair of children demonstrate some of the ways energy makes things happen.
February 29, 2012
Energy Makes Things Happen by Kimberly Bradley can be used for grades k-3rd when discussing energy and different ways we use energy in our daily life. This book explores more challenging concepts for children in primary grades involving energy. A great science lesson can be used with this book where students can discover things around their classroom or home that require energy to work that they were previously unaware of!
February 27, 2012
This book is Energy Makes Things Happen by Kimberly Bradley. This book can be used in Kindergarten to 2 grade classrooms. This book can be used for lessons on energy. This book introduces the concept of energy and explains how it is used through examples such as kites flying in the wind, moving rocks, and sunlight helping plants make food.
February 24, 2013
This is a very useful book to use to teach heat and energy. Very useful to teach how our energy can be traced back to the sun even if we are just playing baseball. Gret resource for the classroom.
Topic: energy, heat
Grades: K- 4
Topic: energy, heat
Grades: K- 4
June 18, 2013
Great introduction to energy, the different types, and that it transfers.
6th Grade New Mexico Science Standards:
Strand II.Standard I.5-8 Benchmark II.1
Strand II.Standard I.5-8 Benchmark II.3
*Available at Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Libraries*
6th Grade New Mexico Science Standards:
Strand II.Standard I.5-8 Benchmark II.1
Strand II.Standard I.5-8 Benchmark II.3
*Available at Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Libraries*
November 13, 2013
A good book for science projects not necessarily age appropriate for pre k. children can get a lot of good ideas from this book about science projects and just fun facts to know.I enjoyed the book and my son loved it.
March 30, 2014
Wonderful book that explains all different types of energy: kinetic energy, potential energy, energy supplied from food, etc. It even includes activities in the back of the book.
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October 20, 2015All by herself!
November 17, 2016
Used for intro to Energy Unit
January 2, 2023
Great book for our Grade 5 How The World Works unit. Love the two activity ideas in the back of the book as well.
February 3, 2011
Nice intro to energy. Types of energy, energy transfer.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews