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A Candidate for a Child's Home Library

7/5/2020

 
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In my last post, I quoted a literacy statistic for a children's home library, "Children growing up in homes with at least twenty books get three years more schooling than children from bookless homes, independent of their parents’ education, occupation, and class." A children's home library contains books that, by definition,  will be read more than once. Roxie Munro's glorious adventure under water on a coral reef, Dive In: Swim with Sea Creatures at Their Actual Size, is a perfect candidate.  

Dive In is enticing on so many levels.  As someone who has had the memorable experience of snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef, once was not enough but once is all I got.  Munro's book powerfully creates the experience. You are immersed and absorbed,  never leaving the sea, viewing 29 of the gorgeous, quirky, fantastical inhabitants of coral reefs.  It deserves to be revisited time and time again.  

Did you ever hear of a spotted cleaner shrimp or a longsnout seahorse or the queen triggerfish, to name a few?  And what's that gray thing that starts looming in the background on 15,16, 17, 18 and  folds out into two double-spreads on pages 19-22 to reveal a reef shark that is 8 feet long?  (Measuring that critter, alone, is worth owning the book.)  

This is a book that commands study and involvement that goes way beyond the five-minute bedtime read.  Munro includes a simple fact or two  for each critter that are gems:
      
          "The common octopus is a mollusk, as are snails, clams, and squids.  Like a squid,
            an octopus also changes colors and patterns to camouflage itself.  An octopus has
            excellent vision and a large brain, and is considered the most intelligent, 
            invertebrate.  It even uses tools to build its den, which might feature a door that
            opens and closes!"

My kid-like curious brain is teeming with questions to know more. If it's a mollusk, where's its shell? How many colors can it be? How do we know that?  What does its eyes have to do with the size of its brain?  

The back-matter reveals a key to the 29 different species as a "walk in the park" diagram including the relative sizes depicted as actual size in the book.  Yep, there's the reef shark, taking up space in the middle.  And the end papers feature coral reefs of the world, including the one I dove into.

Roxie Munro brings the skills of a fine artist and the discipline of a diligent nonfiction author to revealing a complex and glorious ecosystem currently under attack from global warming.  

If Dive In is the first book on coral reefs in a child's library, it will not be the last.  







Climate Change and Hurricanes: Teachable Moments Are on Their Way

8/10/2018

 
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Climate change scientists predict in an increase in the strength of seasonal hurricanes.  Right now,  Michael is approaching Florida. Here comes a teachable moment. If you're required to "cover" earth science and particularly meteorology, allow me to point you to a resource I know quite well.  I wrote it.

It won a STEM award, only in its second year, which is honors the integration of science, technology, engineering and math into a single work. (I've been writing such books for a long time but it's still nice to be noticed.)  

Kids are fascinated with hurricanes because of their destructive power.  Right now, we have state-of-the-art ability to predict the approximate path of a hurricane within several days of warning. This gives residents, who may be in the hurricane's  path, time to board up windows, clear the patios of potentially flying objects, and evacuate if flooding from a storm surge is possible.  

We are nowhere close to steering a hurricane harmlessly into the ocean or diminishing its power.

Nevertheless, scientists and engineers have been thinking  and imagining how it could be done.  What do they need to know?

First, they have to understand the settled science about the the components of hurricanes: namely air, water, and energy.  How do these normally benign essentials for life get organized into such a violent storm?  Next, they have to understand what hurricanes do for the planet. Yes, they serve an important function, mainly to move the heat from the ocean to the stratosphere.  In. A. Hurry. Finally, they must understand the possibilities for weather modification and its potential for unforeseen catastrophe.  It's a fascinating subject for students to ponder.  It's a problem for which there are currently no right answers.  

I think it's good for students to live with questions.

You can find the new paperback here.  And if you want to follow Michael's progress and see what else is cooking in the Atlantic, go to the heart of the matter, the National Hurricane Center.  

Here are links to Nonfiction Minutes on hurricanes and climate change: 

Flying into the Eye of a Storm
Earth's Emergency Heat Valve: The Hurricane
​
Climate Change: The Facts and the Consequences
​
​
Hopping Ahead of Climate Change

     Vicki Cobb

    *Award-winning author of more than 90 nonfiction books for children, mostly in science.
    *Former Contributor to the Huffington Post
    *Founder/President of iNK Think Tank, Inc.
    *Passionate advocate for the joy of learning for every child and teacher.


    Disclaimer: All opinions, typos, and grammatical errors are my own,  especially small word omissions which I often don't notice in my fervor.  

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iNK Think Tank, Inc. is a nonprofit with the mission of using nonfiction children's literature in classrooms

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