Castle: How It Works

How often can grown-ups read a nonfiction easy reader and learn a bunch of cool stuff? That's what happened to me when I thumbed through Castle: How It Works by the amazing David Macaulay. This Level 4 easy reader is packed with engrossing details about life inside a medieval Welsh castle. Macaulay acts as tour guide as he leads young readers up a rocky hill, across a moat, and through two gatehouses. Once inside the castle's fortress, readers gambol through a courtyard and climb the castle's spiral staircase. They get to inspect every inch of the building, from the high towers where the lord and lady live all the way to the depths of the dungeon, crammed with enemy soldiers.

So many terms are bandied about--battlement, catapult, portcullis--that I was relieved to see a glossary at the end. While the vocabulary might pose a challenge for beginning readers, the high-interest subject matter more than pays off. What child wouldn't be fascinated to know how a castle's plumbing system works or that hay was used for toilet paper?

Macaulay confesses in an author's note that he didn't like reading as a kid. Pictures were the lure that drew him in. It's fitting then that the illustrations work so perfectly to support the text. My favorite shows a catapult chucking a deceased pig over a castle wall. Again, details add to the fun. Is it my imagination or does a drawing of an eel pie show an eel's tail peeking from the crust?

Castle: How It Works
by David Macaulay with Sheila Keenan
David Macaulay Studio, 32 pages

Published: September 2012

Today is Nonfiction Monday. Head on over to The LibraiYAn and join the fun!

Lift the Flap and Learn: The Human Body

Kids love books they can manipulate, whether they be pop-ups or lift-the-flaps. There's something satisfying about pulling a tab or lifting a shape to see what's hidden underneath. Babies have Pat the Bunny to mutilate. Toddlers and preschoolers, Where's Spot. But what about beginning readers?

The Human Body is perfect for this age group. Cleverly done, children can lift, slide, and pull to their heart's content, while picking up fascinating facts about how their bodies work. The book starts with a matter-of-fact account of how babies are made. (No tabs to pull or lift here!) Children then lift flaps to see the developing fetus and even get to help "deliver" the newborn when they pull the tab in the operating room. The next spread shows how babies grow and change into adults.

Kids are then introduced to some of the body's major systems (muscular, skeletal, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, nervous, and integumentary) with detours to explore the five sense and taste buds, as well as information on germs and how to take care of ourselves when we're sick.

My all-time favorite spread is called "Your Digestion." It shows how a forkful of broccoli works its way from the mouth through the intestines. The reader helps push the food down as it gets processed. When the tab at the bottom is pulled--out comes the poop. One review I read deplored this as being in questionable taste, but I think kids will appreciate this very graphic illustration of how food turns to waste. I know I did!

For the most part, the illustrations are cartoonish and not very detailed. The illustrator draws germs as weird-looking creatures with facial features. Yet they are realistic enough to portray essential information about the body accurately. The bones that make up a hand, for instance, are correct in number and size.

After pulling and lifting their way through this book, kids are sure to come away with plenty of questions of their own. So bone up on your anatomy and be prepared with your answers.

Lift the Flap and Learn: The Human Body
by Pascale Hedelin
illustrations by Robert Barborini
Owl Kids, 40 pages
Published: 2008
Book provided by publisher.

  This week's Nonfiction Monday Round-up is at Simply Science.



  

Spring Has Sprung!

Awake, thou wintry earth -
Fling off thy sadness!
Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth
Your ancient gladness!
~ Thomas Blackburn, "An Easter Hymn"

Sunday was the Spring Equinox. As if on cue, a robin made its first appearance in our backyard in eastern Pennsylvania. To celebrate the longer days of light, here are five books about Spring to share with young readers.

Spring: An Alphabet Acrostic
By Steven Schnur
Illustrated by Leslie Evans
Clarion, 1999

This book is out of print but well worth searching for. Starting with A for April (After days of/Pouring/Rain, the last/Ice and snow/Leave the earth.), each letter of the alphabet gets its own acrostic poem celebrating Spring. Vibrant linoleum-cut illustrations showcase Spring in all its glory.
 

A New Beginning: Celebrating the Spring Equinox
By Wendy Pfeffer
Illustrated by Linda Bleck
Dutton, 2008

This book explains in lyrical prose the science behind the Spring Equinox and shows how different cultures celebrate its arrival. Hands-on activities, such as growing a pot of wheat or barley as Iranian families do when celebrating the growing season, round out this informative book.

The Spring Equinox: Celebrating the Greening of the Earth
By Ellen Jackson
Illustrated by Jan Davey Ellis
Millbrook Press, 2003

Beginning with the Mayans of ancient Mexico, Jackson examines how different cultures throughout history have welcomed Spring.  Included are the familiar holidays of Easter and Passover, as well as lesser-known ones, such as No Ruz (Iranian) and Holi (Indian). And of course there is our brand new celebration of Spring: Earth Day.  

It's Spring!
By Samantha Berger and Pamela Chanko
Illustrated by Melissa Sweet
Cartwheel Books, 2001

Spring has arrived and all the animals are spreading the joyful news. Beginning readers can share in their excitement for the season.

Spring Is Here
By Lois Lenski
Random House Books for Young Readers, 2005

First published way back in 1945, this delightful pocket-size book was reissued in 2005. The rhyming text and charming illustrations show young children delighting in Spring.

This week's Nonfiction Monday is being held at The Children's War.

Nonfiction Monday: Bones: Skeletons and How They Work

On a recent visit to the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia I stood before a display of skeletons lined up behind a glass case and marveled at the diversity of the human frame. At first glance a skeleton is a skeleton, yet when examined closely, each one is unique.

Steve Jenkins' new book Bones conveys this sense of wonder in spades. The human skeleton is compared to various animals, and what the illustrations so remarkably show is how similar they are. The human arm, a mole's, a whale's, and a bat's  share the same basic set of bones. Another page features a giraffe and human skeleton from the neck up. Although the giraffe's neck is as tall as a man, both have the same number of neck bones (seven). After exploring the size and shape of groups of bones, Jenkins turns his attention to movement, showing how an animal's skeleton is adapted to its needs. Three gatefolds are included. The first reveals a python's skeleton with almost 200 pairs of ribs; the second the skulls of a dozen animals (all drawn to size), and the third a full human skeleton. The book concludes with a fascinating section featuring more facts about bones.

Although the text contains difficult words (vertebrate, femur, symmetrical), the sentences are concrete and clearly written. Level three readers should be able to tackle it (with a little support). It would also be a great choice for guided reading. Jenkins' extraordinary cut-paper collages reinforce the text and greatly add to a reader's understanding.
  
Bones: Skeletons and How They Work
by Steve Jenkins
Scholastic, 48 pages
Published; August 2010

Today's host for Nonfiction Monday is Scrub-a-Dub-Tub.

The Challenges of Writing Nonfiction for Beginning Readers

As a children's book author, I write nonfiction mostly. Quite a few of those books are for beginning readers. The challenges of writing for this group are considerable. With a limited word count you have to write simply and clearly, while keeping your reader's attention. This is also true for those who write fiction, of course. With nonfiction, though, the writer has the added onus of having to distill complex ideas so that a six-year-old can understand them. Take biography. Imagine you are writing a bio of a United States president, say, Abraham Lincoln. You don't know what your young reader already knows about Abe, so you have to start from scratch. How do you cover Lincoln's beginnings, his early years as a lawyer, his presidency, slavery, the Civil War, and his death in under 2,000 words?

If you are author Martha Brenner, you don't. Instead of attempting a traditional biography, Brenner chose the conceit of Lincoln's stovepipe hat to frame her early reader of our sixteenth president's life.  I tip my hat to Martha Brenner and her wonderful biography Abe Lincoln's Hat. Although published in 1994, it still stands as a remarkable biography for beginning readers. Using anecdotes from Lincoln's life, such as turning his hat into a file cabinet where he kept important papers, Brenner leaves readers with an deeper understanding of Lincoln's character. The book focuses on his life as a young lawyer and politician before he became president. Children learn how at one trial he determined the true owner of a colt by setting it loose and allowing it to run to its mother. In another famous case, he freed a man accused of murder by proving that an eyewitness could not have seen the crime since there was no moon in the sky that night. The book ends with Lincoln becoming president. The last few lines state what he accomplished in that office and the final page features photographs of Lincoln and other characters mentioned in the biography. Readers are left with an excellent introduction to Lincoln, and, hopefully, the urge to learn more about him.

Plenty of other early-reader biographers focus on one unique aspect of their subjects' lives rather than trying to cram a whole life into 48 pages. George Washington and the General's Dog by Frank Murphy describes a little-known story about how our nation's first president rescued a British general's lost dog on the battlefield and had to make a difficult decision: Return the dog to the enemy or keep it? Eat My Dust! Henry Ford's First Race by Monica Kulling takes readers on an exciting 1901 car race between Ford and Alexander Winton. Ford took his winnings and used them to start his car manufacturing company.

Nonfiction Monday is hosted today by Sherrie at Write About Now.