Carry Meeee! Baby On Board: How Animals Carry Their Young by Marianne Berkes

When you were a baby, someone carried you. Have you ever wondered what animal parents do?

Animals, like people, carry babies in all kinds of ways. In their arms or piggyback are the most popular ways, but a few, like the kangaroo, have a handy built-in expandable pouch for youngsters. Emperor penguins have an egg pouch between the males' feet into which eggs and very young ones fit to keep warm. Some animal parents have even more creative ways to carry the kiddies.

Being marsupials, baby opossums are born very small and most newborns spend a little time in their mother's rudimentary pouches and then switch to piggyback rides, holding on to her shaggy fur for dear life.

This animal hauls her babies from one place to another.The joeys have it easy as they all ride on their mother.

Piggyback works great for shaggy tree sloths, hundreds of baby wolf spiderlings, chimpanzees, anteaters, and even baby loons who can hop on dad's back to get warm. But Mama Otter has a twist on that trick: she floats on her back and carries her little one on her tummy where it's easy to keep her eyes on her baby. And when she needs to dive down deep for dinner, she tethers him to a handy strand of kelp.

This mom is like a living raft as she transports her pup.
She hunts for food for them and will never give up.

Mama Alligator has an even stranger twist to the piggyback concept. If danger is near, she calls her little hatchlings to hop in her mouth to hide. It's the last place any predator wants to be (and if he does, the last place he'll ever see).

When babies call their mothers, there is no time to pause.
She carries them to safety, grasped in her powerful jaws.

And like human babies, little ones like chimps are carried around in the parents' arms, right where they like to be.

Noted children's nature author, Marianne Berkes' Baby on Board: How Animals Carry Their Young (Dawn Publications) offers an engaging nature science book for both primary and middle grade readers. From loon to lion, manatee to chimpanzee, Berke's engaging nonfiction book provides jolly facts in rhyming couplets for the youngest animal lovers, and for older animal fans or researching middle graders there is an accompanying text with addition information on all twelve featured animals, as well as an appendix with a matching quiz, suggested curriculum connections, and a bibliography of books and websites, Illustrated by artist Cathy Morrison with charming artwork of parents and babies done in almost photographic detail, this versatile volume is a real twofer for children from preschool to middle school ages.

Wide World of Water: Oceans by Precious McKenzie

Ninety-seven percent of Earth is covered by water.

Although humans are dry-land dwellers, given the surface of our planet, earth science should logically begin with ocean science.

And in Precious McKenzie's Oceans (Eye To Eye With Endangered Habitats) (Rourke Publishing/Brittanica), young students begin with that knowledge. The author also offers maps that show the placement of land masses in that watery world which historically were given the names of the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, Arctic, Indian, and the newer designation, the "Southern Ocean," once called the Antarctic.

In the second chapter, The Water We Share, the author points out that name designations are purely for "human convenience."
All bodies of water are connected, flowing from rainfall to rivulets to lakes and rivers, and to seas to oceans, with no boundaries, and in the following chapter, Always on the Move, McKenzie describes how all the oceans are also involved in the free-flowing water cycle--from ocean evaporation to clouds to rainfall and runoff, and back to its flow to the seas, and that cycle of moves in tides. McKenzie then follow with a section on Currents, local or global, as in the case of the Gulf Stream which flows like a river within the ocean from the Gulf of Mexico up the eastern coast of the North America and then veering eastward to warm and bring warmth and rainfall to the west coast of Europe, affecting the biology of plants, animals, and humans there.

In the chapter titled Under the Waters, the author describes the topography of the ocean floor--oceanic shallows, mountains, deeps, and trenches and the means used by ocean scientists to explore them, such as submersibles, sonar, and mapping technology.

The final chapter touches on the types of animal life--from fish to humans--which live in shallows, deeps, on coral reefs, and on the coasts, and the way humans use oceans as sources of minerals and for fun--swimming, surfing, sailing, snorkeling, skin diving, and recreational fishing--and food--commercial fishing and fish farming and plant cultivation. Filled with clear color photos, diagrams, and maps, and with short, snappy chapters, this non-fiction book is perfect as an introduction to ocean science in the middle elementary grades. A glossary, index, and a useful website are appended for young students. Others in this Eye-to-Eye with Endangered Habitats series include Glaciers (Eye To Eye With Endangered Habitats) Rainforests (Eye To Eye With Endangered Habitats), and Savannahs (Eye To Eye With Endangered Habitats).

Common Ground! Just Like Us! Plants by Bridget Heos

Did you know that a plant's leaves communicate? Plants also wear perfume... and cunning disguises. They even wage war, using armor and weapons.

Read on to learn all about our bodacious botanical friends--and how they're just like us.

Sure, plants make their own food by photosynthesis from sunlight, while people have to find lunch if they want to munch.

But some plants also crave meat, or what passes for meat if you are a Venus fly trap, which draws dinner with its sweet scent and chomps down on delicious fly burgers. Even more disgusting is the dead meat stink given off by the horse arum lily, which draws flies by the droves. They crawl into the lily, where they to come to their own dead end.

People get oxygen through respiration and lose water by perspiration, but plants lose water by transpiration. Yes, plants sweat, sort of!

One of the tallest trees on Earth, The Eucalyptus regnans, loses hundred of gallons per day through transpiration. The water comes up through the roots to the topmost leaves--as high as 325 feet. That's a tall drink of water.

And while some plants generously shade other plants to help them save water, others like the Australian Christmas tree are more like the Grinch, sending their roots out to tap other plants' roots and stealing sap for themselves. And then there's, not the Giving Tree, but the taking tree, the strangler fig, which takes over other trees as scaffolds to give their own leaves a place in the sun.

And when it comes to reproduction, plants dress themselves up for the prom, making themselves attractive to pollinators with bright colors, seductive perfumes, and sweet nectar aperatifs. And when it comes to their offspring, their seeds, plants can be pretty clever in giving them a good start in life. Some hide their seeds in tasty fruits, inviting animals to spread them widely. Some are like Velcro, hitching a ride on the more mobile animals' fur. Coconuts even go for cruises, floating on the seas until they drift to islands that need palm trees, and many plants have airborne seeds who soar into the friendly skies in the form of helicopters and parachutes to waft to fertile spots.

And as for warfare... Plants mount defense forces in the form of spines and thorns and prickles and poisons to fight off enemies. Beware!

In her latest in the Just Like Us series, Bridget Heos' Just Like Us! Plants (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) points to the ways in which all lifeforms are similar, slipping in serious botanical facts with great humor and an easy, breezy style. As in the other books in this series, David Clark's comic artwork is filled with jolly sight gags, anthropomorphic plants which spritz themselves with perfume atomizers and coconuts with suitcases and sunglasses cruising the high seas. Together Heos and Clark provide a lively but well-organized book, making for a tasty way for youngsters to learn botany painlessly. This is a worthy addition to the series and a first purchase for school and public libraries.

Cetacean Census: The Orca Scientists by Kim Perez Valice

Orcas are curious about humans. Some swim over to check out orca scientist Ken Balcomb's 19-foot boat.


On occasion, he says, some whales come over to inspect him while showing off their new calves. "Obviously they can tell the sound of our boat. Even if other boats are around, they come to us as if to say, 'You're here again!'" When Ken peers down over the side, a bull (adult male) stares up at him. Often the two will lock eyes until the bull decides to swim away. There's no mistaking that curiosity is an indication of the depth of the orcas' intelligence. Science necropsies show that the the large brain of an orca contains cortical thickness, a physical trait associated with consciousness, memory, attention, language, and thought.

We humans share that curiosity, fascinated by those large-brained, socially-adapted mammals such as whales, dolphins, elephants, and the great apes, that despite our obvious physical differences, share many of our characteristics. And this is absolutely true of the striking black and white orca, the largest of the dolphins.

Kim Perez Valice's The Orca Scientists (Scientists in the Field Series) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) portrays the curiosity we humans share about the magnificent orca and their amazing lives in the sea. Like elephants, whales, and others of the dolphin family, the orcas have a matrilineal family social order, often guided by the oldest female, (one leader is even nicknamed "Granny") who presides over the pod, several generations of children and grandchildren, passing down their particular "dialect" of verbal calls that constitutes the orcas' language and their knowledge of where to find food and safety. Child care is a specially curated skill among orcas as well. Family members help feed expectant and nursing mothers and pass down pod culture in distinct calls and a body of hunting skills to young ones.

A Chinook salmon jumps out of the water. When it plunges back, eleven-year-old J-41 (Eclipse) and her one-and-a-half-year-old son, J-51 (Nova), are now near the boat. Eclipse swims to the fish, clamps it in her jaw, and then lets it go. Nova chases the fish, clinches it, and then loses his grip. Eclipse lunges down to the back of the boat, where the salmon is hiding under the motor. With a quick pop she hits the fish with her head to stun it. Eclipse corrals the stunned salmon, moving it closer to her son, who grabs it and bites down.

Since this pod of salmon-feeding orcas have been declining in numbers and in body size, the scientists are keeping close tabs on their well-being, utilizing a wide array of equipment and techniques, from drone flights, fast cameras to capture above and below water activities and the annual mug shots used to keep count of the pods' population, blubber biopsy specimens, blood tests to measure hormones and toxic pollutants, and sonar recorders to catch the orcas' calls, as well as such low-tech means as scat-scenting detector dogs, trained dolphins who act as stand-ins for their cousins in experiments on the amount of energy required in vocalizations, and the human brains who memorize the different dorsal fin and saddle markings of each individual orca for quick identification

With vivid and detailed descriptions, author Valice and photographer Andy Comins take readers along with real orca scientists on the boats in Puget Sound in the chilly northern Pacific to observe the ebb and flow of life among these incredible animals who are so important to the ecology of the oceans of the world. With hundreds of color photos of everything--from breaching matriarchs to orca poop-scoopers--with this book in HMH's peerless Scientists in the Field series, aspiring scientists share the sights, smells, and sensations of doing animal science at very close range to their large marine subjects.

Appended are several useful sections--"How to Get Involved and Stay Involved," a glossary, a list of selected sources, bibliography, author's note, and index--to serve the needs of young research report writers.

Extreme Exhibitionism! Look at Me! How to Attract Attention in the Animal World by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

Most of the time animals do their best to blend in. A predator that is easy to spot can frighten away prey. And staying hidden is a good idea for any animal that risks becoming a meal for another creature.

But sometimes an animal wants to stand out.

Why would an animal want to stand out in his environment?

Often it's one of those "things we do for love--to attract a mate! That's a time for the biggest, brightest, and best performance to beat out the competition.

The magnificent frigatebird mostly spends its life flying.

Rarely landing, it even sleeps on the wing. But when it's time to start a family, a male finds a spot on the ground and signals a female by inflating a bright red pouch of skin on his throat.

The frigatebird isn't the only creature who floats a bright trial balloon to catch the eye of a lady. The hooded seal blows up his hood and inflates a sack under his neck to show his colors. Like the ostentatious male peacock, great crested grebes and royal flycatchers strut their stuff with bright crests and showy plumes. The mandarin fish sports colors that resemble a preschool finger painting job, while the mandarin duck sprouts bright red, orange, and yellow plumage in spring, and the male Indian bullfrog turns bright yellow, with not one, but two bright green neck sacs to show off for females.

Some odd creatures eschew colors but, like fireflies and the lantern fish, use self-generated light to demonstrate their desirability. But opportunistic species like the photuris firefly and the deep sea dragonfish use their similar lights to attract, not a mate, but a meal.

Some creatures go in for extreme theatrics, with displays and dances that can attract or sometimes deter others, like the Budget's frog, who can puff up and show his teeth--yes, teeth! Then there is the modest little pufferfish, which blows up and raises prickly spines, an act that everybody finds hard to swallow.

Steve Jenkins' and Robin Page's forthcoming animal extravaganza, Look at Me!: How to Attract Attention in the Animal World (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) makes the most of artist Steve Jenkins' expansive collage illustrations which show off various species in all their glorious exhibitionism. With an appendix that features a thumbnail-illustrated glossary and a bibliography of books and internet sources, a new feature, internet search terms for young nature scientists, this newest nature science book is the product of painstaking research and inimitable art, a first choice for all libraries or nature lovers.

Calling Nonfiction Readers! Smithsonian Readers, Early Adventures, Level One edited by Adria Klein.

With the current emphasis on  reading for content, nonfiction books for preschoolers through Grade 2 must be written to entertain, but also to contribute to education in the STEM curriculum--science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Just published today, Smithsonian Readers: Early Adventures Level 1 (Smithsonian Enterprises/Silver Dolphin Books, 2015) offers simple sentence structure and promises controlled vocabulary and "phonic regularity," while providing supplementary curriculum-related information on some favorite subjects of emergent and early independent readers.

Each section of Early Adventures--Habitats, Outer Space, Vehicles, Reptiles, Safari Animals, and Insects--is filled with dozens of colored photos and the sort of subject matter kids seek out on their own--cobras and comets, bulldozers and black mamba snakes,  space stations and praying mantises. Each section has its own glossary, review and self-test questions, and six punch-out cards for review with a partner or alone.

The separate divisions also break down into natural sub-sections: for example, Habitats (and animals living therein)  includes Rain Forests, Savannas, Extreme Deserts, Forests, Mountains, Polar Regions, Islands, Freshwater Lakes, Ponds, and Rivers, Wetlands and Swamps, Coastal Waters and Tidal Pools, Coral Reefs, Open Oceans, and Protecting Animal Habitats.  Animals typical of each habitat, such as polar bears and penguins from the Arctic and Antarctic, are presented with the characteristics which adapt them to each environment.  Vocabulary critical to the concepts presented is stressed in bold face, used and defined naturally within the text and offered for review in the related glossary and review questions.

Along with separate volumes for Level 2-4, this book comes as a kit, with a supplement which contains a multi-page sticker book to reinforce identification skills and a framed  "playscene" with 3-D stickers and two metal cases of "magnetic adventures" on the the Solar System and the Jungle, each with their own guidebook, 30 foam magnets and 20 reusable clings,  Additionally, Grade 4 and 5 levels even get Everything You Need to Know, a kit of 275 fact cards in 18 categories, including weather, the human body, natural wonders of the world, U. S. presidents, and ancient times.

The complete set is a substantial supplement to classroom textbooks and would be especially useful for home schooling students and eager independent learners.

Nature Knew It First! Picture This: Shapes by Judith Nouvion; translated by Vali Tamm

STAR

A starfish has five
strong arms. Count them:
1-2-3-4-5!

Nature, that peerless design artist, is the ultimate source of the familiar shapes that dominate this concept book that teach preschoolers the shapes--triangles, squares, circles, and the more complex diamonds, spirals, curved and straight lines, and even trapezoids, hexagons, and pentagons.

And nature does it in living color, with elaborate shapes and patterns that have their functions--camouflage, simulation, attraction, strength, and sometimes seemingly artistic caprice. Judith Nouvion's Shapes (Picture This) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) is that rare creation, a board book for preschoolers and primary graders that includes stunning photographs for nature study and concepts of geometric shape with illustrations that inspire both young scientist and artist.

Nouvion begins with a ladybug on a sunflower and invites the child to count the dots on her wings, but also remarks that the number of dots reveal the type of beetle she is. Other glorious one- and two-page spreads show a line of pigeons roosting on a straight telephone line, followed immediately by the supple curved lines of a slithering snake. There is a lovely round, blue jellyfish, with radial lines from center to circumference, a more-or-less triangular green moth on a green leaf whose striations mirror the figure, a square-shelled ghost crab, a rectangular-ish flying squirrel in full soaring position, the diamond shape of a devil ray, and the oval egg of a gentoo penguin in its pebble-and-feather nest.

There is a sumptuous semi-circular peacock tail, coiled antelope horns, and the beaded beauty of a chameleon's spiral tail.  A flock of flamingos on a lake form a definite criss-cross, while honey bees tend the golden hexagonal cells of their hive. The fake eyes  of the peacock butterfly adorn the four corners of its trapezoidal wingspan, and a porcupinefish puffs itself into a defensive spiky ball shape. These and more shapes in nature beguile the eye and stimulate the mind of youngsters as they teach and reinforce the concept and vocabulary of shape.

With a text that invites interaction (Can you spot the square before the crab disappears?), this book is a first purchase for public and school libraries, as well as all early childhood classrooms and homes with preschool libraries of their own. Art, mathematics, and biology come together, as they should, in this intriguing nature study book for young readers.

The Mightiest Mollusk The Octopus Scientists: Exploring the Mind of the Mollusk by Sy Montgomery

With their superhuman strength, seemingly magical skin, and eerie intelligence, octopuses have inspired artists, storytellers, and even religious leaders from coastal cultures around the world.

Octopuses are infinitely intriguing because, let's face it, they are just so amazingly weird!

They are mollusks, but they have no shells. They have eight arms, two of which have their own brains and hearts. and all of which can regrow themselves. They walk on their arms, zoom through the water jet propelled by water-pressure jets. and their sense of taste is located in their suckers. They have only one "tooth," a beak powerful enough to crack a crack a crab or amputate a limb.

Shape-shifters who can squeeze through tiny openings, their blood runs blue and their skin can transform from an shapeless mass of pimply, putty-colored papillae to an iridescent, shimmering mass of glowing blue or orange, a total stop-light red meant to give predators pause, or perfectly mottled camouflage matched to any background--all in the blink of an eye. They are smart enough to recognize familiar human faces for years and remember whether they were gentle or threatening, and neat enough after eating to arrange their empty crab shells and legs in neat stacks like china plates and silverware after a dinner party.

Surely a creature with a claim to being the most alien of the animal kingdom is well deserving of scientific study in Sy Montgomery's forthcoming tomorrow, The Octopus Scientists (Scientists in the Field Series) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015).  In this title author Cy Montgomery has the enviable assignment of shadowing a team of ocean biology scientists on the tropical island of Moorea in French Polynesia, where most of the diving is in shallow water and requires only a snorkel and mask and the main hazards are knees skinned on shallow coral while scanning for the octopus dens.

No octopuses are taken as specimens; only their neatly piled "middens," are collected to document their diets. Researchers do administer personality tests to their subject to measure how bold or shy the cephalopods may be.  Octopus psychologists may recognize some similarities to human patients: shy ones cringe and withdraw when poked, while bold ones grab the pencil and try to pull it out of the researcher's hand. Really annoyed octopuses shoot a blob from their sand funnels at the investigator, and desperate ones depart in a cloud of black ink.

Replete with gorgeous underwater photos of multicolored tropical fish and corals, giant clams and crabs, buff-colored sea cucumbers and black-tipped (non-man-eating) sharks, swim-finned students, and teasing glimpses of tropical shores, this book follows the disappointments and discoveries, the discipline of taking endless notes underwater and the discomforts of crawling over dead coral and swimming through algae with the texture of Brillo pads, but especially the joys of adding to the knowledge of this little known but wondrous animal. As always in Houghton Mifflin's notable Scientists in the Field, series, a bibliography and detailed index add to the usefulness of this entry. "Science in the field at its best," says Kirkus Reviews.

For even more psychological octopus oddities, pair this one with Sy Montgomery's just published The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness.

Albert Lite: Meet Einstein by Mariela Kleiner

SCIENTISTS LIKE TO ASK A LOT OF QUESTIONS.

And so do kids, and that quality of being able to question the basis of how everything works is the one which gives kids the ability to appreciate what scientists do when they ask "Why?"

And certainly Albert Einstein was not afraid to ask the big "why?" when he searched into the secrets of energy and matter themselves.

Mariela Kleiner's Meet Einstein (Meet Books, 2010) cheerily takes on the challenge of introducing science and its foremost icon, Albert Einstein, to the youngest readers. Of course, her Einstein is not the messy, hairy, and sometimes quirky Albert of history, but the iconic cartoon-cute, lab-coated Einstein, with his shock of unruly white hair and mustache.

Kleiner's text introduces the concept of science and of scientists, those who ask the big questions about everything--what's in the sky, how plants, animals, and the human body live. Although Viviana Garifoli's illustrations are a bit misleading (Einstein probably didn't spend a lot of his adult working life with bubbling beakers, telescopes, or with micrometers, measuring frogs), her Einstein is appealing to children and does portray the breadth of science However, she does concentrate on his investigation of the nature of light itself and of gravity, which Kleiner's text introduces briefly in its role in maintaining the relationship of sun, moon, and planets in the solar system.

ISN'T THAT COOL?

THINK ABOUT EINSTEIN THE NEXT TIME YOU TURN OFF THE LIGHTS.

MAYBE ONE DAY YOU WILL BE A SCIENTIST TOO.

With their final illustration of a youthful scientist, with an Einsteinian shock of hair, author and illustrator tie together the idea of the scientist with children's curiosity about the unknown, the ultimate aim of this book. Meet Einstein providea a focal point for adults to introduce the idea of science and scientists in early childhood education, providing an easily understandable introduction to basic units on light and gravity, and a good way to inspire youngsters to look at the world in a new way.

And for those young students who want to know more about the man himself, a good next step is Don Brown's Odd Boy Out: Young Albert Einstein,, an accessible picture-book biography which takes the preschool and primary student a bit further into the details of Einstein's early life and into the significance of the great issues of his mature work.

What's Up? Ace Your Plant Science Project by Robert Gardner and Phyllis J. Perry

Science is the study of the things that are all around you, every day. No matter where you are or what you are doing, scientific principles are at work. You don't need special materials or equipment to be a scientist. By making careful observations and asking questions about how things work, you can begin to design experiments to investigate a variety of questions. You can do science. You probably already have but just didn't know it!

And all around us whenever we go outdoors is the wide world of plants. Resolutely growing, growing, growing almost anywhere, even in the most relentlessly urban area, plants delight us, nourish us, sometimes annoy us, and contribute to our basic need for oxygen by their very existence. Robert Gardner's and Ann Perry's Ace Your Plant Science Project: Great Science Fair Ideas (Ace Your Biology Science Project) (Enslow) is an engaging introduction to the world of plant science as well as a useful handbook for easy, inexpensive, and very educational science projects for those middle elementary years. As always, the authors begin with a brief but thorough discussion of the scientific method, followed by safety tips for the novice experimenter.

What then follows are a series of chapters organized around the basics of plant science--"Seeds and Germination," "Leaves," "Stems, Roots, and Buds," "Plant Reproduction," and "Trees," which in themselves cover most of the objectives of the elementary curriculum. Experiments are described step by step, with diagrams, maps, formulas, labelled drawings, and material lists included within the text, and most require little in the way of equipment and adult supervision, presenting ideas without condescension to the young reader, leaving room for open-ended questions to the creativity of the student.

Backed up with a book and web site bibliography and index, this entry into Enslow's notable Great Science Fair Ideas series is a useful starting point for any student to begin preparation for that science fair project sure to be in his or her future.