Big Downer! Gravity in Action: Rollercoasters! by Joan Newton

Most of the time we think of gravity as a static law of nature. It's just sort of there when we need it--on the downside of a long uphill climb--or sometimes when we don't, as when we drop our favorite mug onto the tile floor.

But what more dramatic example of the basic principle of gravity in action than the roller coaster, an amusement park ride that thrills us as it avails itself of the stored energy waiting for that long, heart-pounding drop?

Joan Newton's Gravity in Action: Rollercoasters! (Amazing Science) (PowerKids/Rosen Publishing) combines skillful book design, typesetting, dramatic full-page color photos, and a brisk but simple text to describe the history, science, and fun of this favorite amusement park diversion in a way that will attract primary grade students to master this principle of physics.

Newton begins her exploration of coasters with their history--going back to thirteenth-century man-made sledding hills and explaining the grandaddy of the roller coaster, the "Russian Mountain," a tall wooden platform which riders climbed to enjoy the long, waxed slopes down which wheeled trains of cars careened on special tracks. The first American "coaster," true to our practical nature, evolved from a coal track down a mountain: mules pulled wagons up to the top, were loaded on one wagon while the rest of the wagons were filled with mined coal, and the mules, drivers, and payloads enjoyed a thrilling ride down the tracks to the bottom. Some early P.T. Barnum-type saw the potential in this feature and turned the "gravity railroad" into a tourist attraction when the coal seam was exhausted. Soon entrepreneurs saw the possibilities in this idea and began to construct their own wooden mountains, making sure the the first hill generated enough momentum to carry the train of passenger cars through lesser ups and downs all the way to the finish.

In her next chapter, the author discusses the principle of turning "stored energy," (well-muscled runners in the starting blocks, the cars of a roller coaster at the top of the first hill) into "working energy."

Energy is everywhere. We use energy every day. A roller coaster uses two kinds of energy--stored energy and working energy. Stored energy is the energy an object has when it is still. Working energy is the energy an object has when it's in motion.

A coaster at the top of the first hill has stored energy. Gravity pulls it down, setting it in motion. This changes the stored energy to working energy.

With the basic science in mind, Newton moves on to explain the sorts of energy used to propel the coaster up that first long incline, describing modern rides utilizing air, water, chemical, and electromagnetic power to "load" the energy into the device for its long exciting run. In the final chapters, "Record-Breaking Coasters" and "A Big Thrill," dramatic photos of the rocket-powered Kingda Ka, the world's tallest and fastest at 128 mph, located in the United States, the Steel Dragon, world's longest (1.6 kilometers), and one phenomenal Japanese ride that takes its passengers through fourteen loops!

Backed up with a glossary which defines all the boldfaced terms introduced in the text and a full-page index, Gravity in Action: Rollercoasters! (Amazing Science) is an eye-catching and appealing introduction to the principles of basic elementary school science. This title is only one in Rosen Publishing's Amazing Science series for primary readers.

Back in the Swim: Winter's Tale: How One Little Dolphin Learned to Swim Again by Juliana, Isabella, and Craig Hatkoff

This is a story of Winter, a young female bottlenose dolphin who injured and then loses her tail after being entangled in a crab trap.

A dolphin's very life depends on its ability to move sleekly and swiftly through the water, propelled by up-down movements of its horizontal flukes. When fishermen find a little dolphin, with her tail irreparably mangled in a trap and barely able to keep her head above water to breathe, they rush to free her and take her to the nearby Clearwater Marine Aquarium for care. Marine biologists there, however, despair that a dolphin without a tail can survive without the ability to swim.

But after a few days of recovery, staff scientists see that the dolphin, whom they name Winter for the season of her discovery, is beginning to move around the tank by undulating her body from side to side like a fish. Winter's intelligence and perseverance soon make her a cetacean celebrity who even makes the de rigueur personal appearance on The Today Show.

But there is another milestone ahead for this determined dolphin. Impressed with her adaptability and concerned that the side-to-side movement would eventually injure her spine and internal organs and shorten her life, her team of caretakers come up with a novel remedy. A orthoticist, Kevin Carroll, is called in to design the first-ever prosthetic dolphin tail. With this ingenious construction, made to undulate in the proper dolphin direction and deftly padded with silicon gel to preserve her delicate skin, Winter soon relearns to swim normally and now serves as an inspiration to her human fans.

"Winter is one little dolphin who gives people hope and shows us that anything is possible," her authors write.

The Hatkoff family--Juliana, Isabella, and Craig Hatkoff, first known for their best-selling picture books about the amazing friendship of an orphaned baby hippo and a 130-year-old giant tortoise, Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship, have added an engaging new true tale, Winter's Tail: How One Little Dolphin Learned To Swim Again (Scholastic, 2009, to their collection of amazing animal stories. As usual, the photos by Craig Hatkoff are remarkably appealing to young nature lovers, and the genuinely inspiring story is told engagingly but without sentimentality. Other nonfiction photo stories by the Hatkoffs include Looking For Miza, How One Little Polar Bear Captivated The World (Knut), and Leo, The Snow Leopard.

Making It in Middle School: The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Middle School by David Borgenicht

So, what's so special about middle school--one word--CHANGE.

Middle school is one of those times in life when a whole lotta change happens for a pretty short time. In those middle years, people get taller, they get new interests, their social lives change, and their minds start thinking in more and more sophisticated ways.

Human culture has always had its harrowing rites of passage, but for some kids today, being left in the woods would be their first choice over beginning middle school. David Borgenicht's new Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, The: Middle School (Worst Case Scenario Junior Editions) (Chronicle Books, 2009) offers the wisdom of those who have made that passage. Co-authors Borgenicht, Winters, and Epstein concentrate on how to navigate the "worst case scenarios" that we know will come to everyone in some fashion--everything from what to do if you sit in a puddle of chocolate milk at lunch to what to do if you find yourself busted and waiting in the principal's office.

Tailoring some of their advice especially for girls or for boys, the authors concentrate primarily on advice for everyone in chapters devoted to the first day of school, negotiating after-school teams and activities, and dealing with those inevitable shifting friendships and cliques. With emphasis on preparation, humor, and common sense, this guide provides background knowledge that may seem a revelation to eleven and twelve year olds. For example, in dealing with the worst-case scenario of being called on when you don't know the answer, the authors offer this advice: 1) Always raise your hand when you DO know the answer; this will limit the likelihood of being called on when you don't. 2) If it's a language class, answer "I don't know" in that language. 3) Tip the question to someone who DOES know the answer; 4) Try your best answer by showing what you DO know in the general area of the question. 5) Just say "Sorry, I don't know that one," with a smile.

The authors also offer advice for dealing with cheaters and for being accused of cheating, how to cut homework loads down to size, and snappy and funny comebacks for times when you need to minimize the damage from your own screw-ups. (Example: You blow a play in a ballgame: Say "Let's don't call THAT play again!") And perhaps the best advice--try to see the positive side of that big switch to middle school:

"You get a clean screen, new powers, and the chance to turn yourself into the person you have always wanted to be."

For some, er, novel advice on surviving the middle school experience here are a few great fiction books about making the big switch. For more "expert" guidebooks, see A Smart Girl's Guide to Starting Middle School: Everything You Need to Know About Juggling More Homework, More Teachers, and More Friends (American Girl Library) and The Middle School Survival Guide: How to Survive from the Day Elementary School Ends until the Second High School Begins.

Cuisine a la' extreme: Bug-a-licious by Meish Goldish

Of course, not everyone eats insects. The idea makes some people sick. One eater's "yuck!" is another eater's "yum!"

Lick a cricket? Somebody must. Cricket Lick-Its are lollipops with once-live crickets encased in various sweet fruit-flavored lollies, marketed, along with chocolate-covered ants (where else?) in California. If your taste runs to the savory rather than the sweet, just zoom over the border into Mexico, where you can buy bags of fried grasshoppers or fold them into your 'hopper and avocado tacos, spiced up with lemon juice, garlic, and salt. While you're south of the border, try out their leaf-footed bug pizzas, too. After all, insects are said to be a good source of protein, vitamins, and minerals--and low-fat to boot, making leaf-hopper pizza healthier than pepperoni!

Meish Goldish's Bug-a-licious (Extreme Cuisine)(Bearport Publishing, 2009) explores the world of insect snacks--from stink-bug pate' in South Africa to wasp-rich crackers in Japan and from honey ants in Australia to roasted termites in Nigeria. After all, insects are always trying to bite us. Why not show them that we sometimes bite back?

If your taste doesn't run to Thailand's three-inch batter-fried water bugs in plum sauce, there are plenty of other delicacies in Bearport's Extreme Cuisine series, including Spider-Tizers and Other Creepy Treats (Extreme Cuisine), Baby Bug Dishes (Extreme Cuisine), and Mammal Menu (Extreme Cuisine), as well as the forthcoming Shocking Seafood and Slithery, Slimy, Scaly Treats. All are illustrated lavishly with all-too-clear color photos of these exotic foodstuffs from all around the globe. Part gross-out browser, part sophisticated educational travel book, the Extreme Cuisine series is definitely not your father's nonfiction, but well suited to the tastes of some!

Time Travelers: Wild Horses: Galloping Through Time by Kelly Milner Halls

Watching those sleek three-year-olds, long, delicate legs stretching out to cover the track in the famous races of the Triple Crown, it is hard to imagine that the first ancestor of the horse was an eight-inch high creature with four horny toes on its front legs and three on its rear legs. No majestic master of the steppes was this little "dawn horse" either; preyed upon by land and river carnivores, the shy Hyracotherium met its extinction 45 million years ago, long before any would-be human wrangler appeared. But its relatives persisted, evolving through the Mesohippus to Merychippus as a grazing herd animal progressively running faster as its toes evolved into speedy hooves.

By the time Pliohippus evolved, with its one sturdy and swift hoof on each foot, its kind, still small at 12 hands high, had acquired wide-set eyes to spot predators and special adaptations of the skull which enabled the characteristic range of whinnies with which the herd communicated, and this nearly modern horse ranged widely across North America. Despite its land of origin, however, its inheritor, Equus, the modern horse, which successfully emigrated across the land bridge to Asia, soon became extinct in the Americas, leaving its migrant descendants across Asia and Europe to become the horse of human history and legend.

Kelly Milner Halls' Wild Horses: Galloping Through Time (Darby Creek Exceptional Titles) goes on to tell the story of Equus and how they became the work horse and war horse of our own story, changing the face of civilization throughout Eurasia.

Halls features especially the intriguing story of the Przewalski horse, the last and almost vanished descendants of those wild horses first hunted for food and depicted by our early ancestors in those famous cave paintings at Lascaux. Like their cousins the zebras, Prazewalski horses have short stiff black manes, no forelocks, a dark strip down the center of the back, and even occasional barred hindquarters. A "rescued" species, less than 1900 Przewleskis are alive today, despite heroic efforts to shelter them in the wild and breed them in captivity after their numbers were decimated during World War II.

Halls also describes the historic horses of Europe and the Middle East--the Tarpan, the Sorraia, the Camargue and the Konik, and the Caspian and the Arabian, and does not neglect the wild horses of Africa--the various zebra relatives, the Namibia horse, and the wild ass. She then turns again back to North America where Equus began, with the story of the wild horses reintroduced by the Conquistadors and other explorers--the mustangs, Abaco Barbs, and even the burros of our own recent times.

Illustrated lushly with colored photos and detailed drawings, Wild Horses: Galloping Through Time (Darby Creek Exceptional Titles) is a fascinating study of the animal which, with its strength and speed, so thoroughly shaped much of human life. Author Halls also appends listings of sources of information and sites where wild horses may be studied and observed in North America, organizations which specialize in wild horse rescue, and an extensive bibliography of journal articles, books, and web sites, as well as a full index, to round out this thoroughly researched and readable nonfiction book.

Night Flyers: Bat Loves the Night by Nicola Davies

Gliding and fluttering back and forth, she shouts her torch of sound among the trees, listening for her supper. All is still.

Sometimes poetic, always informative, author Nicola Davies' Bat Loves the Night with Audio: Read, Listen, & Wonder describes the captivating nighttime world of the pipistrelle bat, a thumb-sized insect-eating mammal, as she leaves her attic roost in an old farmhouse for her nightly forage and returns as dawn begins to light the sky to feed her waiting baby.

Object of fear, symbol of darkness, largely unseen, and yet our only mammalian cousin capable of soaring and dazzling flight, the bat is a marvelous animal whose ways are fascinating to study. Davies describes the physiology of this little bat, her leathery wings supported by her long bony fingers, her "coat-hanger" toes which enable her kind of roost hanging from rafters, rocks, and branches, and her amazing ears which guide her surely and swiftly by echolocation through forests and urban settings to capture even the smallest of insects--mosquitoes, gnats, and tiny fruit flies--by the thousands for her nightly feast.

Nicola Davies' language is both exact and lyrically descriptive. Here she records the capture of one of the mother bat's evening snacks:

Then a fat moth takes flight below her.

Bat plunges, fast as a blink, and grabs it in her open mouth. But the moth's silvery scales are moon-dust slippery. It slithers from between her teeth.

Bat dives, nets it with a wing tip, scoops it to her mouth. This time she bites hard. Its wings fall away, like the wrapper from a candy bar.

The author weaves a world of information about this and other species of bats into a story-like narrative of one night's flight in marvelous word pictures, the bat zipping "over bushes, under trees, between fence posts, through the tangled hedge" swooping untouched as "she beams her voice around her like a flashlight and her echoes come singing back."

At last the little bat makes her way into her roost, calling out to locate her little pup huddled with the rest of the nursery group for warmth, and enfolds the tiny batling in her leathery wings to suckle her and sleep until the dark returns.

Outside the birds are singing. The flowers turn their faces to the sun.

But inside the rough hole the darkness stays. Bat dozes with her batling, waiting.

When the tide of night rises again, Bat will wake and plunge into the darkness, shouting. Bat loves the night.

Wondrously paired with Sarah Fox Davies' beautiful, blue-tinged paintings, this little picture book is a feast for the eyes as well as for the mind, a great introduction to the study of the bat. Included is a CD which, according to the cover blurb, offers "an engaging read-aloud with sound effects, a segment focusing on fascinating facts, [and] a read-along opportunity guided by prompts.