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 here.  Review copy provided by publisher.