Taking a break ...

 It's the last week of summer ~ I can't think of a better time to take a break and head out to the woods or a beach, a lake or a mountain...

See you in a couple weeks.

Small Seeds, Big Dreams

 

Saving Delicia: A Story about Small Seeds and Big Dreams 

by Laura Gehl; illus. by Patricia Metola 

40 pages; ages 3-7

Flyaway Books, 2024    

theme: seeds, trees, conservation

Every summer afternoon, Kari and Cookie sat in the shade of the beautiful Delicia tree listening to Old Otis tell tales from way back when.

Back then, the world was filled with delicia trees, but now only one remains. What happens if it disappears? Kari wants to make sure it won’t – that there will be delicia fruit for children in years to come. And she has an idea for how to do it. All she needs is the old freezer in Otis’s shed.

What I like about this book: Though it’s fictional, the story reflects some of the realities we see in our world. Disease and environmental changes have pushed many plants to the edge of extinction. People are trying to save those plants – especially crops – by collecting seeds and storing them in seed banks. Author, Laura Gehl goes into more details about seed banks in her author’s note at the back of the book. “Already,” she writes, “seed banks have helped restore crops around the world that were killed by natural disasters, wars, and pest infestations.” Seed banks play an important role in preserving our planet’s biodiversity!

I always love the opportunity to chat with Laura about her books, so I asked her a couple of questions. Okay, three.

Me: What inspired you to write about saving seeds (and creating a seed bank)?

Laura: When I first began learning about seed banks, I was fascinated. I was particularly amazed as I read about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which is located close to the North Pole. Picturing thousands of seeds stored safely for the future, in a plethora of shapes, colors and sizes, ignited my imagination. I knew I wanted to write about seed banks, but finding my way to the story took a long time. I tried a number of different approaches, trying to craft a story introducing seed banks to young readers that would be interesting, inviting, and inspiring. I hope I succeeded in the end! 

Me: Do you garden - and have you gotten any seeds through seed swaps or seed libraries? 

Laura: When my oldest two kids were little, we lived in an apartment building with a community garden, and we enjoyed growing tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables there. Then we had two more kids and life got too hectic for gardening to fit into our schedule. When COVID took over the world, my oldest son came home on the last day before schools closed with a tomato plant rescued from the environmental science class. That started a new spurt of gardening for our family, and we grew lots of tomatoes, lettuce, and herbs that summer. (My in-laws, who are avid gardeners, lived with us for a while during the lockdown, so we benefitted from their expertise.) But then life got hectic again, and gardening fell by the wayside. When I have my next spurt of gardening energy, I plan to get seeds from a seed library. There are several seed libraries in Maryland, and I am excited to give them a try. Eating heirloom tomatoes is one of my favorite summer activities…now I want to attempt growing some! 

Me: Do you think you'll try to save some seeds after having written about it?

Laura: Definitely! I want to try saving seeds when I get back to gardening, and I would love to host a neighborhood seed swap in the future.  

Beyond the Books:

What seeds would you save if you could? Beans? Apples? Tomatoes? Some of these seeds aren’t very hard to save. Tomatoes, for example – just squeeze (or scoop) seeds from a ripe tomato into a sieve and rinse them, and let them dry. Other seeds that aren’t too hard to save are pumpkin, melon, beans, and some flowers such as sunflowers, calendula, poppies, and lupine.

You can learn more about what a seed bank is here and about the Millennium Seed Bank at Kew Gardens here. Be sure to check out this video of how Native Seeds/SEARCH stores their seeds in their seed bank.

Laura is a member of #STEAMTeam2024. You can find out more about her at her website, https://lauragehl.com/

We’ll join Perfect Picture Book Friday once they resume. It’s a wonderful gathering where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copy provided by Blue Slip Media.

Explore Outdoors ~ face-to-face with bumblebees!

 

If you get the opportunity to watch bumblebees this week, see if you can look one in the eye. Sometimes that means getting on the opposite side of a flower. This bee has their tongue out - sipping nectar perhaps? The flower is wild mondarda (bee balm)- they look cool close-up, too!

Clouds in Space, and two more books for Space Explorers

 

Butterfly nebula/ NASA, ESA Hubble 

Have you ever heard a weather report from space that mentioned it would be cloudy with a chance of stardust? If not, that's okay because today we're diving right into some cosmic cloudiness.

theme: space, stardust, astronomy

Clouds in Space: Nebulae, Stardust, and Us 

by Teresa Robeson; illus. by Diana Renzina 

48 pages; ages 7-9

‎MIT Kids Press, 2024   

Want to know a secret? When you look up after sunset – to count the stars, glimpse a glancing meteor, or marvel at the moon …..

There are things you can’t see clearly. Things that look fuzzy or blurry because they are clouds. Which, if you’ve ever stood inside a cloud (like on a foggy day) you know just how fuzzy things can look. This is how Teresa invites readers in to learning about nebulae –  by comparing space clouds to the clouds we see on Earth, told from the Nebula’s point of view. 

What I like about this book: I love how Teresa brings the vastness of a nebula down to Earth by comparing it to a cloud in our sky. For example, clouds can look like different things; just yesterday I saw a cloud that looked like a dog with long ears blowing in the wind. Nebulae can look like different things, too. Take the butterfly nebula – it looks like a tiny bug with two gigantic wings. There is also back matter, where readers can learn more about the discovery of nebulae and the different types of nebulae. And there’s a gallery of nebulae portraits.

I wanted to know more about how this book came to be, so I asked Teresa and she graciously responded.

Teresa: What inspired me to write this book was a combination of a love of astronomy (I've been an amateur astronomer since 1979) and a background in climatology (I took meteorology classes at university for a climatology major). Those provided the foundations (like kindling). The spark came one day around 2012. I was looking at the clouds with the kids and thinking "we see shapes in clouds on earth, but astronomers also see shapes in the clouds in space...heeeeeey!" And off I went with the first draft of this book.

MIT Kids Press has another space book that was released back in March

I’m a Black Hole (Meet the Universe) 

by Eve M. Vavagiakis; illus. by Jessica Lanan  

40 pages; ages 7-9

MIT Kids Press, 2024

This book is told from the black hole’s perspective. Hidden in space and hard to find, a black hole is created when a star collapses. The collapsing star pulls in anything nearby, from stars and moons to entire planets. Reader who want more details will find them in the back matter, where the author explains black holes in more depth.

And here's one more...

Always Beginning: The Big Bang, the Universe, and You 

by Candace Savage; illus. by Rachel Wada 

44 pages; ages 4-8

Greystone Kids, 2024    

This story of the beginnings of the universe is told in lyrical language, filled with alliteration ad wonderful imagery. For example, that moment the universe burst forth, “sizzling stars spiraled into galaxies.” The illustrations and poetic language transport you to a time far, far away. The timeline at the back helps ground readers in the process from Big Bang to formation of stars and planets, to the beginnings of life. Back matter explains things in more depth.

Beyond the Books

Go cloud-watching with a friend. What shapes do you see in the clouds? Does your friend see the same thing you do? Give your clouds “nebula names.”

Go night sky watching – and take some binoculars, or a telescope if you have one (or can borrow one from a library). Look for cloudy patches in Scorpio’s tail, or in the left arm of the W that forms Cassiopeia.

Make some nebulous art. Let images from the Hubble space telescope inspire a poem or painting … or perhaps one of those nebulae have a story of their own to tell.

We’ll join Perfect Picture Book Friday once they resume. It’s a wonderful gathering where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copies provided by the publishers.

Explore Outdoors ~ a Very Young Katydid

 Summer is a great time to slow down and smell the ... hey! What's that on the monarda?

It's bright green, with looong antennae and back legs that are perfect for jumping. My first thought was something in the cricket family - but it's so skinny! A friendly entomologist identified it as a juvenile bush katydid - and reminded me that the young ones are skinny. 

 

 

They do fill out as they grow. Here's a photo of an adult by Bruce Marlin/wikimedia

What interesting bugs are you finding on flowers?

 

[CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25107468]

Go fish!

 Fourth-grade students in a neighboring town participate in the NY state Trout in the Classroom project. So when I saw Mary Boone’s newest picture book, I knew I had to read it!

School of Fish 

by Mary Boone; illustrated by Milena Godoy 

32 pages; ages 4-8

Albert Whitman & Company, 2024 (releasing Sept 5)

theme: fish, nature, life cycle

Shiny, jellylike balls float down, down, down…

coming to rest at the bottom of the fish tank. They’re salmon eggs, and Emmy’s class will raise them and then release the fish into a river when it’s time. This book follows the salmon’s life cycle, from egg to alevin to fry to release day. Along the way, the students learn about more than fish; they learn about ecosystem connections. And they learn how to work together for the good of the fish.

What I like about this book: OK, I will confess that my absolute favorite scene is when Emmy tells her classmates that it’s fry day – and they day, “no, it’s Thursday.” Fry day is a huge day for fish – and for the students, too. Now they get to feed the fish! And I love that Emmy searches for the “perfect” release spot for her salmon on Release Day. Also, there is back matter where kids can learn more about salmon life stages and review some of the words introduced in the book.

This book was so much fun to read that I just had to ask Mary a couple questions.

Me: Did you spend time at schools observing the salmon-raising? And if so, did you talk to students and teachers about their project? 

Mary: I love research – especially hands-on research. To learn about this program, I spent time in a handful of schools, observing lessons, learning the ins and outs of caring for the baby salmon, and talking with teachers and students. I also participated in a half-dozen salmon releases, including one that included thousands of students.

To learn more about salmon in general, I also started volunteering with the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement group. I’ve helped monitor juvenile smolt traps, assisted with DNA testing as part of a project aimed at increasing Steelhead populations, and planted trees in an effort to create a better habitat for salmon.

Me: What cool things did you learn while working on this book?

Mary: I grew up in the Midwest, so I started out not knowing much about salmon at all. I learned so many cool things. I love that I can now tell the difference between the different species of salmon. I think it’s cool that salmon change color over the course of their lives. I love that spawning salmon find their way back to the same stream where they were hatched.

The part of my research that made me really happy was when I met teachers who are able to use this Salmon in the Classroom program across different subject areas: writing about the salmon, drawing them, doing math problems to figure out how far a salmon might swim in a month or throughout its life. The students in those classes truly are getting the most out of this program.

Beyond the Books:

Find out what kinds of fish live in the rivers and lakes near you. Draw a picture of one of your local fish.

Paint with a fish. It sounds a bit … fishy, but here’s what you do: roll ink onto a clean fish and then press paper against it to transfer the print. Before you press roller to scale, though, spend a few minutes looking at your fish. Write down some words that describe their mouth, their fins, their scales. What does your fish feel like? Here’s instructions for painting/printing your fish.

Make an underwater viewer to look for fish and other critters living in a local stream, pond, or lake. All you need is a half-gallon milk carton, some plastic wrap, and rubber bands. Here’s how. 

We’ll join Perfect Picture Book Friday once they resume. It’s a wonderful gathering where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Explore Outdoors ~ 5-minute field trip

 A few years ago lightning hit an oak tree behind my garden. Neighbors helped fell the tree and cut up most of it for firewood... but there remained a trunk too thick for any of our chainsaws. So we left it for part of my outdoor curiosity lab. Last month I wandered over to see what was going on. Turns out a lot is happening. Fungi, moss, and lichens have made their appearance over the years, and now small tree seedlings are gaining a foothold. Insects galore hang out on, in, and under the log. Here are a few photos from my Five Minute Field Trip.

 

Take a 5-Minute Field Trip in your neighborhood~

what do you discover?

More books for Nature Exploration

Last week I featured a couple books for curious young naturalists. This week I've got two more.

theme: plants, animals, observation

Nature Spy Guide 

Words & photos by Shelley Rotner 

32 pages; ages 4-8

 Millbrook Press, 2024

Anyone can be a nature SPY. Here’s how. First you have to GO OUTSIDE.

Because, being a nature spy means you’ve got to see, smell, touch, and hear things close-up and in-person. In this book, Shelley Rotner asks readers to look up, look down, look all around. To breathe in the air and smell the flowers. Look closer, she says. Use your ears.

What I like about this book: Shelley uses simple text and photos of kids in nature to introduce basic observation skills. She reminds nature spies to use all their senses, to observe things both near and far, and most of all, to not give up – because some animals like to hide. I like the back matter, too. She includes a simple plant and animal identification list for things most kids in North America might see. And – even more important for parents looking for ways to incorporate nature spying into daily life – she provides a dozen activities. My fave is “deer ears” with cloud-watching coming in a fast second.

Backyard Bugs (Shine-A-Light) 

by Carron Brown; illustrated by Wesley Robins 

36 pages; ages 4-8

Kane/Miller Book Publishers, 2023    

Did you know you can find amazing animals close to home? Just step outside…

Yay! another book that invites children to head outdoors to discover nature around them. In this case, bugs. From lady bugs to painted ladies, dragonflies to fireflies, this book celebrates arthropods – and a couple of their non-arthropod neighbors.

Beyond the Books: Go outside this week and be a Nature SPY! 

• Look. Listen. Touch. Smell. 
• Draw pictures of what you see. 
• Write notes in your Official Nature Spy Notebook. (If you don’t have an ONSN, they you can make one by folding paper and stapling or sewing it into a notebook.)
• Watch clouds. 
• Watch squirrel antics. 
• Follow ant and snail trails. 
• Smell the roses. 
• Feel the shade on your face. 
• Listen to what the birds and bugs are saying. 
• Use your imagination. 
• And have fun spying on the critters living around you.

We’ll join Perfect Picture Book Friday once they resume. It’s a wonderful gathering where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copies provided by the publishers.