D. J. Ward

This book discusses and teaches about 6 simple machines. It tells what they do, how to make them, how they can help us and gives examples of them in our everyday lives. It does have some advanced vocabulary that the children will learn about while reading this book, but it keeps things simple enough for children to understand. I think this would be a great introduction for students before you are getting ready to learn about machines, tools and the engineering or building process. Kids would really enjoy getting to create and experiment with their own simple machines. An interesting discussion to have with children after reading this book would be to have children pair up with partners and try to think of the different types of simple machines that we come across in our everyday lives, I think it would be a great way for them to really make a connection to the book.… (mehr)

How do people live and survive in a big city? How do they get electricity, clean water, and garbage collection? "Your city has a plan for that." This picture book illustrates how people get clean water, power their homes, traverse the roads safely and other needs to make city life comfortable. Descriptions of the different systems such as sewage treatment and power plants will intrigue children although their more concrete thinking may generate more questions about how things work. Cartoon-like illustrations have plenty of little details for examining. Kids (and even adults) will come away with a greater understanding of all it takes to make a city livable.… (mehr)

Up-to-date and generally well-written series. Numerous good illustrations clearly described. The captions differentiate among them well, some are artist's illustrations, some are digitally enhanced photographs, some are digital images, some are original photographs. This is especially important for a book about space where the number of original photographs of space phenomena must be few.

The biographical details about Einstein were a bit wrong. He wasn't a clerk, he was a Patent Clerk, a real and somewhat demanding job that made it rather difficult for him to work on physics.

Topics are:
1. Our sun.
2. Black holes.
3. The big bang.
4. Dark matter
5. Dark energy
6. Space travel
7. Life on other planets

I would say the order is from least to most speculative. Probably the step from 2 to 3 is from stuff I can be pretty confident about to stuff I'm not sure how people could be really sure of.… (mehr)