How Old Is A Whale? soft, story-driven STEM on age for those 6 and up

Lily Murray got the memo. That’s the memo that states that the best way to get reluctant readers is to ask a question. How Old Is A Whale? Animal Life Spans From the Mayfly to the Immortal Jellyfish starts with a question that kids might never have asked, but asks it anyway. It’s the same Pavlovian instinct that kicks in when someone gently tosses a ball at you. You don’t actively want to catch or throw something, but you’ll catch the ball. How Old Is A Whale? I don’t know. I don’t care, I’ve never thought about it, but now that the book has asked me, I’m curious. A whale must have an interesting age scale because the book has thrown the question my way, so let’s see.

How Old is a Whale? asks the question that every elementary kids poses, plus dozens of other age-related ones on animals of all sizes.
Ask the question, you know that you want to

Please Don’t Bite Me!, smart text and timeless art serves up insects right

There are some books and some publishers that are impossible to resist for elementary school readers. These are the types of books that operate like a friendly, education-based Venus Flytrap. Kids will open the book to any page, be curious or entertained about what they see, and then thumb forward or backward to dig into more of the book. The book’s title, Please Don’t Bite Me! also entices kids to open it up. Instead of asking a question, it posits something in the form of a statement. What could be biting me? It’ll probably hurt, I sure hope this thing doesn’t bite me. Is this biting thing something that’s poisonous?

Please Don’t Bite Me! is a brilliant combination of enticing, timeless visuals with non-fiction text that engages ages 7-10, without grossing them out or dumbing it down.
Nature is timeless, the art is classic

Meet the Megafauna!, massive gatefolds with big critters

The biggest and smallest are the population of most elementary school essays. Meet the Megafauna! is the sort of illustrated book that feeds the soul of elementary school students that attracted to extremes. Most of the time it will be boys who want to read about the biggest, extinct creature and then proceed to do a three-minute report on them to class. There are other ways for educators to use Meet the Megafauna!, but they do require a bit more panache.    

Meet the Megafauna! uses great art and gatefolds to remind elementary ages that big creatures are cool, they don’t have to be dinosaurs and can have relatives among us today.
Big animals are cool and don’t have to be dinosaurs to qualify

What’s Wild Outside Your Door?, mature, nature illustrated 411 for 8 and up

I taught fifth-grade science for a bit one year and the content in What’s Wild Outside Your Door? is cut from the same cloth as many of those lessons. There’s a paragraph about the food web. That particular paragraph is exactly on the level as to what fifth-graders will learn about it. When you, or your young student are looking at What’s Wild Outside Your Door? the 500-pound gorilla that you might be subconsciously thinking about is Nat Geo Kids. All of those books, as well as, this book are non-fiction books that also have their circular feet in the vein diagram of reference books. This book is by Peter Wohlleben, who has written several other children’s non-fiction, reference books that operate on a different plane than their more well-known counterparts. So what is the difference?

What’s Wild Outside Your Door? is non-fiction nature for smart, curious kids that want to learn more about the living things around town.
Smart kids will get it. Be smart kids, get it.

Investigators: All Tide Up, the seventh in the series shows no signs of age

As an adult, I know better than to laugh at repeated uses of puns. It’s the low end of the bad-dad joke pool.  I know that some would say that’s an impossibility, but there’s a distinct difference between puns and dad jokes, plus billiards is a highly underappreciated sport.  Investigators is a go-to series of all-age graphic novels and the seventh entry in it is All Tide Up. This series of graphic novels breaks the fourth wall, is loaded to the brim with puns, has colors that immediately give it a ‘classic’ vibe, and still maintains one of the highest laugh-to-page ratios that readers will encounter.

Investigators: All Tide Up is the seventh entry into this all-age-graphic novel series that continues to deliver laughs and puns aplenty.
Here be puns, and lots of humor to be had for ages 8 and up

Footsteps on the Map, young child-illustrated book utopia from Nat Geo Kids

When is a National Geographic  Kids book not a National Geographic Kids Book? Footsteps on the Map has the National Geographic Kids logo in the upper left-hand corner like others in their lineup, but something is different here. It’s obvious when you look inside, it’s a simpler book, with far fewer words than usual and mixed media illustrations that combine all manner of mediums.

Footsteps on the Map is a dreamy illustrated book about nature and exploring, done only the way that Nat Geo Kids can do it.
A nature book on exploring for those kids 3 and up

Kin: Rooted in Hope, novel in verse that’s more than the sum of its parts

In thinking of the many ways that author Carole Boston Weatherford could’ve told the story of Kin, the only possible way to effectively do it is poetry. Specifically, this is a novel in verse, basically a book full of poems that combine to tell a narrative. This is where things get hazy for Kin because it’s not a linear story. Instead, it spans hundreds of years, generations within a family and often shifts the focus of who is speaking. By the time you get to the end of Kin you realize that this is a strong, powerful book that examines slavery in the United States in a way that you haven’t seen before.

Kin: Rooted in Hope is poetry, a novel in verse experience that has non-fiction roots on various aspects of the human toll of slavery in America.
poetry, but derived from history and powerful

Fungi Grow, balances poetry, naturalistic STEM and entertainment

Fungi Grow is a smart illustrated book that operates like Chutes and Ladders, if it were laid over an MC Escher drawing with everything still making sense. This is the world of mushrooms. If you ever thought that it would be impossible to make a lyrical illustrated book that dances between poetry, educating kids about fungi and entertaining young readers all to the same degree, then this is just the sort of book that’ll grow on you. The fact that it’s an oversized book provides younger readers more opportunities to fill in the book at their own pace, hopefully letting them know that it’s normal to love to read. Will a cute rabbit and dozens of multi-colored mushrooms on the cover yield a new generation of mycologists?

Fungi Grow sounds like a rallying cry for a dude to get larger in the garden. In reality, it’s a STEM based poetry book that melds lyricism, nature and entertainment.
You don’t have to be a mycologist or stem-kid to love this book
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