Publisher: Charlesbridge

Behold the Beautiful Dung Beetle

School Library Journal Review Gr 1-4-While transforming animals' waste products into life-giving material, dung beetles perform a vital cleaning service to the environment. This overview of the three types of dung beetles sometimes uses fanciful language, e.g., the "dung-pat pie fresh from the oven," but rather than distract, it lightens the topic. Often arriving within […]

Stone Giant : Michelangelo's David and How He Came to Be

Kirkus Reviews 2014-01-29 Sutcliffe make a big impression with this eye-catching introduction to one of Western civilization's most iconic sculptures. When the young artist was summoned from Rome back to his native Florence, he was commissioned to take on a work of heroic proportions. This sculpture of the Old Testament hero David was to symbolize […]

No Monkeys, No Chocolate

Most kids love chocolate, but few of them know that its main ingredient, the cocoa bean, comes from a tree that grows in tropical rain forests. Dual-layer text describes the life cycle of the tree, emphasizing its botanical structures and highlighting the interdependence of the plant and animals such as the pollen-sucking midge, brain-eating coffin […]

Too Hot? Too Cold?

Kirkus Reviews: A fascinating and thorough look at how both animals and humans regulate their body temperatures. Beginning with the difference between warmblooded and coldblooded species (the terms endothermic and ectothermic are introduced but not used), Arnold devotes spreads to such topics as muscle movements, sweating, the shrinking and expanding of blood vessels in the […]

A Black Hole Is Not a Hole

Kirkus Reviews Oh, my stars! As the cover proclaims, a black hole may not be an actual hole, but readers will be glad they fell into this book. The volume guides readers on a (literally) out-of-this-world tour, dealing with topics and concepts that, in the hands of a less-gifted writer, might have remained obscure and […]

Snowmobile

Kirkus Reviews The quest to invent a skimobile, which burned in one man's heart as fiercely as the Holy Grail, as researched and re-imagined by Older. Older tells the story of Joseph-Armand Bombardier in the unhurried manner of a river approaching the sea, allowing for plenty of twists and turns as it goes its leisurely […]

A Warmer World : From Polar Bears to Butterflies, How Climate Change Affects Wildlife

Publishers Weekly Arnold explores global warming by focusing on how it directly affects several species and their habitats. Some animals, like Edith’s checkerspot butterfly, are forced to migrate north because temperatures in southern areas have become too warm for the plants that they require for survival. Polar bears have less time to hunt as a […]