Like Salt and Pepper! Melia and Jo by Billie Aronson

Melia loved science. Measuring. Testing. Reading. Observing. Testing again.

In her backyard lab, attired in a pilot's helmet and tall boots, Melia (short for Amelia Earhart) patiently follows the scientific method, observing, experimenting, testing her hypothesis, evaluating, testing again... But...

Most of Melia's creations weren't finished.

The head of her robot keeps falling off and her paper airplane design fails to fly.

Suddenly Melia hears some strange sounds from next door. The sounds were clearly coming from the new girl, who was yelling, whirling, and twirling over the fence.

"I'm Jo!" she said. "But you can call me Jojo. Or Josephine. Or Jo Jo Jo on the Go, Go, Go!"

"You can call me Melia," said Melia.

JoJo flits from one invention to the next, clamping Melia's upside-down colander with antenna on her head, helping herself to a licorice stick, and tossing Melia's paper plane into an unfortunate trajectory. Only a strategic dive by Amelia prevents her plane from nosediving into a mud puddle.

"Too bad your plane doesn't fly like the fluff on a dandelion," JoJo said, demonstrating with a big puff.

Jojo pokes the rest of the licorice stick into the neck of Melia's headless robot, and with a flying jete', skips back into her own yard. Melia sighs with relief as she tries to restore order in her lab. But she can't help making some observations. The licorice stick holds her robot's head on its body better than anything she's tried. The upside-down colander makes a perfect combination portable radio (and sunhat), if you think about it, and with a straw added, a puff of breath makes her plane at last soar on its solo flight.

Melia was shocked. "Jo is a genius!

Can we be a team, Jo? Please....!

"No deal-ya, Melia!" replies Jo.

She turns away and leaps high into a grand tour jete'.

But JoJo is surprised to find that her leap lands her high in a tree. Now it's Melia's turn to think outside the box.

And Melia has just the expansion contraption to extract JoJo from her perch, and both girls have a mutual eureka moment when they realize they are better together, in Billy Aronson's Melia and Jo (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018). Art plus science! A + STEM = STEAM, and together they are the DREAM TEAM. Aronson even appends hands-on directions for readers to create their own breath-powered paper airplane.

It's a celebration of collaboration in Billy Aronson's story of an odd couple of diverse friends who work together like bacon and eggs, peanut butter and jelly, and creativity and reason. Author Aronson, who helped create the Broadway show "Rent" and wrote for the show "The Wonder Pets," "Beevis and Butthead," and "Peg + Cat," collaborates well with his teammate on "The Wonder Pets," artist Jennifer Oxley, the Emmy-winning director of the animated series "Little Bill," "The Wonder Pets," and "Peg + Cat."

Say Goodnight, Albert: Goodnight, Lab (A Scientific Parody) by Chris Ferrie

IN THE GREAT GREEN LAB,
THERE WAS A LASER
AND A LAB NOTEBOOK

AND A PICTURE OF EINSTEIN
WITH A STERN LOOK.

No picture book has been more beloved--and more parodied--than Margaret Wise Brown's perennial best-seller, Goodnight Moon, with its familiar green cover and irregular verse form that has chronicled the steps in bedtime preparation and persuasion for generations of tykes. Indeed, the cover layout is so iconic that the subtitle A Scientific Parody is hardly necessary on Chris Ferrie's latest tot science title, Goodnight Lab: A Scientific Parody (Baby University) (Sourcebooks Jabberwocky Books, 2017).

Chris Ferrie, a writer devoted to introducing the vocabulary and concepts of science to the nursery school set, faithfully parallels the narration of Margaret Wise Brown's bedtime story. With the dour image of Albert Einstein looking down from the wall, we bid goodnight to both the thermometer and the spectronomer and selected scientific apparatus and paraphernalia and even the clutter of labwork, and Ferrie even includes that bugaboo of academics everywhere:

GOODNIGHT, RUBBISH.

GOODNIGHT, GRUMPY OLD PROFESSOR
SHOUTING "PUBLISH!"

In his several Baby University board books, such as his amazingly top-selling Quantum Physics for Babies (Baby University), Ferrie avoids the chicken-and-egg question by introducing scientific vocabulary and complex concepts to the very young simultaneously, believing that naming big ideas goes right along with early understanding of scientific principles.

In this clever parody, however, author-illustrator Ferrie offers no theories, just a comic take-off on an old bedtime standby, tossing in items such as lab coats, the ubiquitous sticky notes, lab notebooks, and ammeters and voltmeters along the way. This little board book also offers some chuckles for grownups, while simultaneously stimulating more questions than yawns--which was likely the author's plan all along.

For youngsters who love wordplay as well as lab paraphernalia, pair this one with Michael Rex's killer-diller knockoff, Goodnight Goon: a Petrifying Parody, (read review here) Rex's equally punny Runaway Mummy: a Petrifying Parody, or Michael Teitelbaum's spoof of Eric Carle's classic caterpillar tale, The Very Hungry Zombie: A Parody.

Space Race! Charlotte the Scientist Is Squished by Camille Andros

Charlotte was a serious scientist.

Charlotte has all the right gear. She's got beakers, test tubes, tongs, tubes, and stoppers. She's got the lab coat, the protective glasses, and the clipboard. She's mastered the scientific method. She's all ready to do some serious experimenting. Except for one problem.

Charlotte is squished!

Charlotte the Rabbit has thirteen siblings. There's no private space at the dining table, no room in the bathtub...

And sometimes not even in the toilet!

Charlotte is not above trying a bit of charlatan science. She tries a formula for making her little brothers and sisters disappear. It doesn't work. She tries to make herself disappear, with no result. And the little ones persist in toying with her test tubes and breaking her beakers. There's no way to keep the baby bunnies out of her lab.

Charlotte decides that she needs more than the scientific method. SHE NEEDS SPACE!

If she was to going to get some space...

She would have to go there!

Charlotte does the calculations and constructs herself a carrot-style rocket ship, and with her critical equipment in the cargo hold, she lifts off for Outer Space. Her mission is a success. The Carrot has landed!

Space is full of space! It's quiet and roomy, which makes it easy for Charlotte to record observations and carry out her experiments in peace. She rejoices in her tidy test tubes and peerless specimens. At last, she manages to get to Step Five of the Scientific Method: CONCLUSIONS!

Space is a scientist's dream. Except for a few complications.

What was Charlotte to do when she ran out of toilet paper?

Who was there to talk to? Who was there to play with when she need a break? Who was there to give her a hug?

As poet Robert Frost said, "Earth's the right place for love" (and t.p.), as Charlotte learns, in Camille Andros' just published Charlotte the Scientist Is Squished (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2017), as she lifts off for a happy touchdown back home, where she puts her big orange spaceship to its perfect use as just what she needed all along, not Outer Space at all, just...

PRIVATE SPACE!

Camille Andros' tale of too many siblings is well told, especially with the help of artist Brianna Farley's charming illustrations which make the best of the cast of cute and mischievous little bunny siblings and the young scientist who is determined to pursue her proclivity for science. Farley tucks in lots of rabbitty touches within her drawings, adding plenty of comic charm. Andros and Farley also append a final section on the steps in the scientific method to reinforce the incidental learning within the text for readers who like Charlotte, are into serious about their science.

Meeting the Norm: Normal Norman by Tara Lazar

THIS IS MY FIRST TIME NARRATING A BOOK. I'M A BIT NERVOUS.

MY ASSIGNMENT TODAY IS TO DEFINE THE WORLD "NORMAL."

Our student scientist is all set to do field observations. She's got the magnifying glass. She's got the clipboard. She's got the lab coat. And she's got a subject for her observations.

He's a gorilla.

ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE NORMAN. HE WILL HELP ME DEMONSTRATE THE WORD NORMAL.

Norman is clearly a gorilla. What might be a normal gorilla diet?

Bananas, of course.

Except Norman displays a clear preference for... pizza!

Our junior scientist tries to induce Norman to try a banana. She even peels it for him!

"NO--OOO--OOO!"

Wait a minute! Norman speaks English? Don't normal gorillas grunt?

Norman refuses to sleep in a tree. He prefers climbing into his bunk bed! Our young scientists offers him a pile of nice, fresh leaves and branches. Norman hunts up his plush toy anteater.

"I CAN'T SLEEP WITHOUT MR. SNUFFLES!" NORMAN PROTESTS.

"AN ANIMAL WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL? THIS IS NOT NORMAL!"

Norman simply doesn't conform to the norm!

Our young scientist can't argue with her raw data. Maybe... she needs to alter her hypothesis!

Could normal be impossible to define? Sometimes it is, in Tara Lazar's Normal Norman (Sterling Books, 2016). Norman may not be your normal gorilla, but he's a lot of fun to hang out with, as our heroine discovers as she rides away with abnormal Norman, a friendly purple and gold gorilla, on his mount of choice, a rhinoceros with bells on his horns! Our novice animal scientist seems to be the only conventional character in this imaginative tale of abnormal Norman, illustrated with appropriate outside-the-box page design, fonts, and colors by S. Britt. A creative look at a walk on the wild side.