Friday, November 9, 2012

Just a Second....

Just a Second
by Steve Jenkins
40 pages, ages 4 and up
Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2011

Got a second? That's all the time it takes for a dragonfly to travel 50 feet, a cheetah to run 100 feet, or for light to travel 186,000 miles. "Some surprising - even amazing - things can take place in a very short time," writes Steve Jenkins.

Other things take longer. The average person can walk 300 feet in a minute. During that same time a snail might only move a foot. It takes an hour for a starfish to crawl 30 feet and a day for bamboo to grow three feet taller.

The trouble with time, though, is that it's a human construct. The natural world measures things by a different standard, not minutes and hours. Still, it's neat to find out how quickly, or slowly, animals run, plants grow, populations increase. So grab a stopwatch and head outside. But first, take a sec to read this book - and admire Jenkins'  awesome paper collage artwork.

You can test how fast you and your friends are here. And check out more STEM Friday resources hereReview copy provided by publisher.

1 comment:

  1. Time is such an interesting concept. Leave it to Steve Jenkins to bring it to children.

    Thanks for the review.

    ReplyDelete