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Tag: Rebecca E. Hirsch

Rise Up to The Sky for #Arborday

March 31, 2023 / / 1 Comment

Arbor Day is coming up April 28, 2023. Looking for ways to participate? Consider reading the new picture book, Rise to the Sky: How the World’s Tallest Trees Grow Up by Rebecca E. Hirsch and illustrated by Mia Posada as part of your celebration.

The book starts with a simple question:  What are the tallest living things? Do you know? If you guessed trees, then you are right.

Next are a series of illustrations that show visually how tall some of the biggest trees are. Unlike Mia Posada’s eye-catching illustrations in Plant’s Can’t Sit Still, this time she uses cut paper collage to compare big trees to some man-made structures.

Young readers will then discover how trees get so big. Starting with a seed, trees use sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide from the air to grow, grow, grow. The text is a straightforward introduction to such concepts as photosynthesis, capillary action, and the stages of the life cycle of trees.

 

Back matter includes further information about parts of trees (leaves, roots, trunk, etc.) and tree growth as well as information about where the world’s tallest trees live, two activities, and suggestions for further reading.

Rise Up to the Sky will appeal to budding arborists and nature lovers alike.  Perfect to accompany units on life cycles and plants, or to prepare for a trip to see redwoods. And, don’t forget to share a copy for Arbor Day.

Related Activity Suggestions:

1. Plant a tree for Arbor Day or any day. Preferably choose trees that grow naturally in your area and make sure they have plenty of room to reach their mature height.

2. Huge trees start from small seeds. Take a walk and look for tree seeds.  Check our Seed Photo Archive for examples.

An acorn is a seed of an oak

A pine seed germinating

3. Download a free teacher’s guide with activities at Lerner.

More Tree Science Activity Suggestions (From This Blog):

    1. Tree Transpiration
    2. How far does the water have to travel from roots to top of the tree?

Want to find more great books like this one? Visit our giant, redwood-sized list of tree books for kids.

Reading age ‏ : ‎ 5 – 10 years
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Millbrook Press ™ (April 4, 2023)
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1728440874
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1728440873

Disclosure: This book was provided as an E-ARC for review purposes. Also, I am an affiliate with Amazon so I can provide you with cover images and links to more information about books and products. As you probably are aware, if you click through the highlighted title link and purchase a product, I will receive a very small commission, at no extra cost to you. Any proceeds help defray the costs of hosting and maintaining this website.

Night Creatures #kidlit Soars and Slinks

September 13, 2021 / / 2 Comments

Today we are featuring the first in a series of fabulous STEAM picture books that are coming out this month, Night Creatures: Animals That Swoop, Crawl, and Creep While You Sleep by Rebecca E. Hirsch and illustrated by Sonia Possentini.

Even though we don’t see them as often, about half of the animals on the planet are nocturnal (active after dark). This book is a wonderful introduction.

The book starts in a soft, lyrical settling-down-to-bedtime voice.

A cool night breeze
blows softly on your face
As night creatures wake…

Soon, your heart begins to race as bobcats leap, owls pounce, and rabbits run away.  No worries, however, because the quiet descends again as night turns into day.

Young readers will enjoy Sonia Possentini’s marvelous illustrations. Possentini uses a pallet of blues, greens and black tree silhouettes to reflect nighttime, but also capture the warm hues of a bobcat’s coat or an owl’s feathers.

In the concise and informative back matter, learn more details about the featured animals.

Night Creatures is a celebration of animals that are active when many people are sleeping. Slip into a copy and discover what you have been missing.

Related Science Activities:

Check out the incredible free activity guide to download. Seriously! Perfect for any unit on nocturnal animals. Rebecca has instructions for taking a night hike, as well as activities that reflect how your senses change in the dark. What might you touch and feel? How might your color vision change? What might you hear? What might you smell?

In this video, listen to some of the sounds you might expect to hear at night. Note:  The video is silent except for the parts with the animal sound recordings.

 

Consider having a moth ball, which is a nighttime moth watching party (previous post).

See our growing list of children’s books about nocturnal animals at Science Books for Kids.

Reading age ‏ : ‎ 5 – 10 years
Publisher:  ‎ Millbrook Press ™ (September 7, 2021)
ISBN-10 : ‎ 1541581296
ISBN-13 : ‎ 978-1541581296

Disclosure: This book was provided electronically by the publisher for review purposes. Also, I am an affiliate with Amazon so I can provide you with cover images and links to more information about books and products. As you probably are aware, if you click through the highlighted title link and purchase a product, I will receive a very small commission, at no extra cost to you. Any proceeds help defray the costs of hosting and maintaining this website.

 


Looking for more children’s nonfiction books? Try the Nonfiction Monday blog.

STEM Friday #Kidlit Living Fossils: Survivors from Earth’s Distant Past

October 30, 2020 / / 1 Comment

For STEM Friday, let’s delve into a new middle grade book,  Living Fossils: Survivors from Earth’s Distant Past by Rebecca E. Hirsch.

In Living Fossils, Rebecca Hirsch has scoured the earth for animals that not only look like their fossil ancestors, but also are the last few species of their kind. She has put together a fascinating collection of six amazing animals.

I knew that Living Fossils would be one of my new favorite books when I flipped the pages to the introduction and spotted a velvet worm. Every entomologist knows about velvet worms (Phylum Onychophora) because they have characteristics of both arthropods (the phylum containing insects) and annelids (earthworms, etc.). However, you don’t often see these unusual critters mentioned in children’s books.

Chapter 2 reveals the both heartbreaking and hopeful story of the horseshoe crab, which up to recently has been the only source of a chemical with important value to the medical field.

The next chapter features the chambered nautilus (also shown on the cover). Have you ever seen one of these cool mollusks at an aquarium? If not, I’ve dug up a video for you.

The nautilus is a cephalopod, and like their octopus cousins, are intelligent enough to learn how to negotiate a maze.

 

Public domain illustration

Chapter 6 discusses another of my most-liked creatures, the platypus. It took forever for scientists to figure out where to categorize these animals that look like a bird/mammal mash up. Hirsch writes about how the decision was made.

I’m not going to reveal the next animal she picked, but it was one I — a biologist — had never heard of before. What a survivor it is, one that has managed to stay hidden from humans for decades.

All in all, this book is a tribute to the incredible diversity of animals on our planet, as well as a clear call that we need to conserve them.

Living Fossils will entrance budding biologists. Educators will appreciate the deep, careful research and extensive back matter. You will want to investigate a copy today!

Related STEM Activity Suggestions:

Grade Level : 3 – 8
Publisher : Millbrook Press ™ (October 6, 2020)
ISBN-10 : 154158127X
ISBN-13 : 978-1541581272

Disclosure: I won this book in a giveaway contest. Also, I am an affiliate with Amazon so I can provide you with cover images and links to more information about books and products. As you probably are aware, if you click through the highlighted title link and purchase a product, I will receive a very small commission, at no extra cost to you. Any proceeds help defray the costs of hosting and maintaining this website.

Come visit the STEM Friday blog each week to find more great Science, Technology, Engineering and Math books. Note: this is a new link as of 10/2018.

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