Field Trip: My Trip to the Science Museum by Mercer Mayer

IT WAS SCIENCE DAY AND MY CLASS TOOK THE BUS TO THE SCIENCE MUSEUM.

A science museum, with its exciting exhibits and its happy hands-on science activities is like an educational theme park, and Little Critter and his crew are full of curiosity about what they can see and do.

And they are in luck. Their tour will be hosted by none other than Dr. Neil DaBison, the famous television science celebrity. Their teacher Miss Kitty and Dr. DaBison treat them to activities like making a potato battery, touching a glop of plasma. Then Miss Kitty and Dr. DaBison bravely touch the Van de Graaff generator, which makes their hair stand straight up.

THEY LOOKED SO SILLY!

But there's more! There is the planetarium show, where they feel as if they are flying through space and circling the planets themselves and see what must be billions of stars. Then the kids have lunch aboard a model of the Space Shuttle.

Finally it is time to tell Dr. DaBison goodbye and get in line up to climb back on the bus for what now seems like a very slow and short trip through space back to their school. But Little Critter is inspired.

"I WANT TO GROW UP TO BE YOU, DR. DA BISON. YOU HAVE THE BEST TOYS IN THE UNIVERSE!"

Mercer Mayer's latest Little Critter tale, Little Critter: My Trip to the Science Museum (Harper Festival, 2017) is the perfect book to prepare preschoolers and lower primary students for a museum field trip. Mercer Mayer's illustrations of "Dr. DaBison" (a.k.a the real Neil deGrasse Tyson) are quite skilled caricatures, making the famous PBS star scientist easily recognizable to savvy youngsters, and this adventure featuring Mayer's famous character gives kids a realistic look at what they can see and do at a science museum.