Daddy Mojo used to teach. Being an ex educator he’s interested in many things about education, such as teaching policies, best practices and bureaucracy.
By its title, My First Book of Japanese could easily be mistaken for a children’s book on colors, shapes, and numbers. Actually, it could be used as an introductory vehicle for young children to Japanese. It could also be great for elementary, middle, or high school students to learn basic words. I spent a couple of years living in Japan and My First Book of Japanese is a great refresher for my vocabulary.
Being a substitute primary school teacher I know what schools look like, and sadly, most of them look the same. If you work in an office building you probably know what they look like too and I’d bet that most of them are cookie-cutter-tastic. I’m not naïve, I realize that architecture, especially those that make a statement, come at a price of either money, land, resources or a combination thereof. The Power of Architecture: 25 Modern Buildings from Around the World is an illustrated book for curious kids that want to explore how things are and the way that they could be.
Octopuses Have Zero Bones is one of the best books of the year. Granted, it is very early in 2023, but that’s OK because it was technically released in September of 2022. We’re not going to let a little technicality like that get in the way of calling this book an instant classic and a ‘best of’, whichever year you want to put it in. One thing that we ascribe to is treating kids as smart as you want them to be. When our own children were younger we did it that way and it’s the way that I teach my classes, regardless of the grade. Octopuses Have Zero Bones is a counting book, but it’s so much more than just a book that’ll teach counting to toddlers.
I understand why some parents don’t want to read a book to children in a second language. It’s the accent that we perceive they’ll be laughed at. I get that, but spoiler alert, your elementary school student is not going to know if you’re slightly mispronouncing a word in a second language that’s in a book. This is a good thing. To be able to have a book in Spanish and English, with exactly the same content in a way elementary-aged kids will understand and enjoy, is a good thing. Mi Comunidad!/My Community! is by 123 Andres and it’s a high-quality bilingual illustrated book that kids will enjoy, but might fly under your radar.
I’m a substitute teacher who mainly works in elementary schools, precisely four of them in the area where I live. This gives me a wider-than-average compression of books and styles. Some of the libraries and classrooms that I visit are next-level, whereas some need more attention to their catalog. The one constant in all of the classrooms and libraries that I teach in is that the reference books from National Geographic and National Geographic Kids are there. It doesn’t matter how old the National Geographic Kids Almanac is, it’s still there, read and enjoyed. I was in a library the other day and saw fourth graders thumbing through the almanac for 2013. We received a couple of the current releases from National Geographic and wanted to highlight a couple of the pros of each of them.
National Geographic Animal Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition
Starting in third-grade students will write essays on various subjects and more often than not, they’ll choose animals. It could be an essay on a wacky critter with a disgusting name, cool characteristic, or unique attribute, but kids like to write about what they love, and they love these books. National Geographic Animal Encyclopedia 2nd Edition is by Dr. Lucy Spelman and is broken up into mammals, birds reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, and fish. Each of those categories is then provided with dozens of animal examples that make up those areas. For example, I had no idea what a tapir is and how they’re related to rhinos.
Those two pages alone have enough information for those elementary school ages to create an age-appropriate essay on those thick-skinned beasts that live in Africa, Asia, and South America. This is curiosity food 101 with photographs being the cat videos that bring home the bacon. Kids will listlessly open the book, marvel at the colors in the pictures, become curious about Tomato Frog from Madagascar, and then start sharing facts with you about it.
Treasure of Greek Mythology
Treasury of Greek Mythology: Classic Stories of Gods, Goddesses, Heroes & Monsters is a National Geographic reference book that takes a slightly different approach. It looks at 25 characters who make up that mythology, including a timeline, map, and more resources. Each profile has gorgeous, painted illustrations that introduce its mythos and shows them at work. You’ll see how Hephaestus was born with a deformed foot and cast to an island where he could throw rocks into a volcano.
This led him to invent many things made of metal, like a chair with wheels on it which allowed him to move more quickly. His love life didn’t fare so well initially, but patience and ingenuity pay off, which led to his marriage to Aphrodite, who is covered in the next profile. That’s what will interest young readers, Treasure of Greek Mythology has narrative story elements that allow even those who haven’t embraced the Percy Jackson books will enjoy.
5,00 Awesome Facts (About Everything)
5,000 Awesome Facts (About Everything) from National Geographic Kids is that random, impossible-to-resist, rabbit hole of knowledge that captures ages seven and up for a period of their schooling. It captures them, blazes their eyes with photographs they never thought they’d see, and aligns them with droplets of information and anything and everything.
The glossary at the end of the book proves that any conceivable interest area is covered. Zorses, yeti, jug bands, creepy facts, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and thousands of others have their page number listed so that young readers can dig deep and quickly. Those ages don’t need to explore, they can just thumb any page in the book and be entertained by something. Then they’ll turn to the next page and discover something even more fascinating. Those kids will run into your office and then share with you that tidbit of things that they just discovered. Enjoy the ride, it’s education and this is the process of getting them curious and asking themselves “what is something that I don’t know?”
National Geographic Kids Almanac 2023
National Geographic Kids Almanac 2023 is the elephant in the room. This is the elementary school armchair traveler that ages 7 and up will go gaga for. Its soft format makes it akin to Grays Sports Almanac. Those ages can bend it, thumb through to different categories, and impress their erstwhile present-day Biff friends as they drop knowledge on any topic under the sun. It’s organized and a steady resource for those essays that elementary school kids will have to do. Like 5,000 Awesome Facts, its glossary is comprehensive and can shortcut readers to exactly the spot they want to research.
Every elementary school library needs this edition and every fifth-grade classroom would benefit from it. Because I work in various elementary schools I know some of the parents who I’ve seen at schools or out in the community. Sometimes they will ask me what they can do to help. Depending on the subject that their child is in I will tell them that the National Geographic Kids Almanac, 5,000 Awesome Facts or Animal Encyclopedia are low-hanging fruit. They’ll retort that they really want to help, and short of being the room parent and organizing the year’s events; I’ll tell them that these books can do more to help the classroom than almost anything else.
The Almanac retails for only $15.99 and is pound-for-pound one of the most widely read books that any elementary school library has. Depending on the time of year and the schedule for the ELA essays there will be a queue to check them out, so a library having more than one is never a bad thing.
National Geographic Kids Almanac 2023, National Geographic Kids 5,000 Awesome Facts (About Everything), Treasure of Greek Mythology, and National Geographic Animal Encyclopedia 2nd Edition are National Geographic Kids.
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Assuming that an illustrated book is fact-based, and not some interpretive trip about what a cloud looks like, adults shouldn’t need to be told what it’s about, should they? Ah, dear reader, these are times when board books can be about quantum physics and illustrated books can tell true tales about things that you never learned about in school. So, no, sometimes adults will read an illustrated book and still have no idea as to how to describe, talk about or understand what they just read, but that’s ok. In the end, we all want this generation to be smarter and better than us, don’t we? To that end, I’m a Neutrino, Tiny Particles in a Big Universe is a beautifully illustrated book about a tiny thing that you’ll never see, yet there are billions of them zipping around us at any moment.
There are different literary vehicles for upper elementary through middle school students to get their Earth science on. A commonality between most of the interesting ones is that there is not a narrative device. Sure there are dozens to hundreds of engaging photos and text that do the trick but organizing this non-fiction stuff in a way that keeps them reading is challenging. They might jump in for one nugget, but it’s a different story when trying to lock down their attention for an entire book. Road Trip Earth is a book from Molly Bloom, Marc Sanchez, and Sanden Totten, the folks who created the Brains On! podcast and seems intent on shifting expectations, or at least reading duration.
The time for rubbing our hands to our body before we touch the door knob or open the freezer section at the grocery store is nigh. As an adult, I know that it’s the build-up of something and when I touch the metal thing it gives me a shock. Also, as an adult, I just learned why this only happens in cooler weather. Enter Chris Ferrie, an author who has a sweet spot for writing science-themed books geared at younger readers. He’s written about Quantum Physics for Babies, My First 100 Space Words, plus many more, as well as, Let’s Power Up!. Let’s Power Up!, Charging into the Science of Electric Currents with Electrical Engineering is a very smart illustrated book, but will kids want to read it?
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