Extreme Planet

Extreme Planet
by Carsten Peter & Glen Phelan
112 pages; ages 8-12
National Geographic Kids, 2015

If you're looking for adventure, this book opens up lots of possibilities. Tucked within the covers are photographs of some of the wildest places Carsten Peter has visited: volcanoes, caves, glaciers, and canyons.

But since it's winter, let's explore chapter 2: Glaciers and Ice Sheets. Greenland is cold and icy - a huge ice sheet one-to-two miles thick covers most of the island. This sheet was built up over thousands of years, with snow falling on top of older layers and compressing them into layers of ice. This ice pushes outward from its thickest region, says Carsten, like cake batter spreading out as you pour it in a pan. But a lot slower.

Each chapter includes current topics and science activities. In this chapter, Carsten addresses the issue of climate change and provides tips on things you can do to reduce global warming. He also includes a hands-on activity challenging readers to find fabrics that could keep them the warmest in an Arctic expedition.

Carsten writes - and explores - far away places. But, he says, there's a lot to explore right in your own community. Visit a nature center and learn about the plants and animals that live there. Learn what it was like before people settled in the area. Or settle down in your back yard and watch the wildlife that visit your part of the planet.

Today is STEM Friday. Drop by the STEM Friday blog for book reviews and other STEM resources.

Another Good Book: Inside Earthquakes

Inside Earthquakes

By Melissa Stewart; illus by by Cynthia Shaw

48 pages, ages 8 and up

Sterling Children's Books  2011

This is part of a series of “inside” books – neat books with fold-out, flip-up pages for a closer look at science. More than a million earthquakes shake our planet each year, writes Melissa Stewart. Most of those temblors are too small to feel, but every now and then a big one comes along and shakes things up.

We think we live on a solid planet, but inside the earth things are always moving. Take those tectonic plates, for example – they move about as fast as our fingernails grow. Stewart maps out the epicenters of quakes and, sure enough, they outline the plates on which our mountains and forests lie.

She explains faults and discusses the tsunamis, avalanches and mudslides that can accompany quakes. In addition to describing how scientists measure temblors (another word for quake) she lists great quakes of our time. “Each year our planet experiences about 140 earthquakes with magnitudes of 6.0 or greater,” Stewart writes. Those are the ones that are powerful enough to cause real damage. Fortunately scientists and architects and engineers are busy working on ways to predict quakes and design better buildings.

The science is spiced up with journal entries and stories from people who experienced earthquakes. Have you ever experienced a large earthquake? I asked Stewart.

No, she said. “But I'm sure it must be very scary.” She reflected on the Haiti earthquake a couple years ago.  Recovery has been slow due, in part to the poverty and lack of roads and other infrastructure that would help recovery efforts.

“That quake was especially devastating because the buildings were not constructed with earthquakes in mind,” Stewart said. She noted that Haiti is located near a place where multiple plates meet. “It won't be long before we see another big earthquake in that general area,” she said.

One of the neat things Stewart learned while working on this book is how animals behave prior to an earthquake. They seem to know that something bad is about to happen, she said. But how? “There is a lot to learn about how other animals sense the world.”

Did she ever have second thoughts about writing a children’s book with so much devastation in it? “We were constantly thinking about how to portray the devastation,” Stewart said. “We want kids to get an accurate, honest picture of what’s happening without being too overwhelming.”

The neat thing about writing for kids, she says, is that when they hear about endangered animals or people in crisis, they want to act immediately. And they are often successful at motivating adults to take action. Still, Stewart keeps in mind what she is exposing young people to.
 

This is part of STEM Friday, a round-up of children's science, technology, engineering and math books. Today's host is Simply Science.

It's also part of Nonfiction Monday which is hosted on Feb. 6 over at Capstone Connect. Review copy provided by the publisher.