Handy list #2: my science books

These are my books in print that have a science theme. The titles are linked to each book’s page on my web site:

Blast Off to Earth: A Look at Geography

When a group of robots travel though our solar system, they stop at an intriguing spot: Earth! After wondering why the planet isn’t called Ocean, they locate the poles and equator, then visit on each continent to see what is located thereabouts.

The Edible Pyramid: Good Eating Every Day

A feline waiter shows hungry diners what their options are by exploring all the sections of the updated USDA Food Pyramid. Vivid illustrations show the grains, veggies, fruits, nuts, and proteins that make up a varied, healthy diet. A spread about exercise in this revised edition encourages kids to get moving in their favorite ways.

The Great Trash Bash

What can the residents of Beaston do about having too much trash? After visiting the landfill, they reduce their trash in various ways such as buying less stuff, fixing things, and recycling.

Messages from Mars (coauthored by Andrew Schuerger)

A hundred years in the future, a group of lucky students travel to Mars to see the largest volcano in the solar system, visit historic landing sites, fly through vast canyons, walk around huge craters, and much more.

My Teacher is a Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Poems, Jokes, Riddles, & Amazing Facts

Starting 4.5 billion years ago, readers are taken on a whirlwind tour to see early cyanobacteria, invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs, mammals, and birds. The highlights of life on Earth are described with verses, cinquains, limericks, jokes, and fascinating facts.

Postcards from Pluto: A Tour of the Solar System

A robot named Dr. Quasar takes students from Mercury to the Moon to Pluto (now designated a “dwarf planet”). Each student sends home postcards in his or her own unique writing style to tell family and friends about the amazing adventure.

The Shocking Truth about Energy

Erg is a bolt of lightning that explains the good and bad news about various forms of energy from fossil fuels to wind, solar, and geothermal.

That’s all for now folks, so happy reading!

A handy list of my math picture books

Since starting to “tweet” I can see how useful it is to create blog posts about a very specific topic. The “math phobia” #mathchat last week also was an inspiration. Without further ado, here are my math picture books with a summary and a link to each book’s page on my web site:

Follow the Money!

George the quarter starts at the mint, becomes change in a cash register, is used to buy a balloon, falls out of a pocket, is saved in a piggy bank, and has many other adventures as he travels through the economy.

Fraction Action

Miss Prime and her students learn about fractions in five short stories, starting with simple geometric shapes and objects such as half a glass of milk. Scenarios such as how to divide food evenly for a lunch or how far to discount lemonade for sale in wintertime show how fractions are used in real life.

The Great Graph Contest

Who is the best at making graphs, Gonk the toad or Beezy the lizard? With Chester the snail as judge, they set about collecting data and making bar graphs, pie charts, Venn diagrams, and quantity graphs. Rocks, bathing suit patterns, cookies, and flowers are some of the items that wind up being grouped and displayed in colorful visual form.

It’s Probably Penny

Lisa’s dog Penny is the focus of her homework assignment about probability. Lisa predicts the likelihood of events such as whether Penny will see a shark, dig up a buried treasure, or turn into a cat, then records the actual results.

Mapping Penny’s World
This time Lisa needs to make maps, so she starts with a floor plan of her room, complete with symbols, a key, a compass rose, and a scale. Other maps include Penny’s treasures, her favorite places, and a trip around the world Penny might take some day.

Measuring Penny

Lisa needs to measure something for her homework, so she chooses her dog Penny and a few of her doggie friends at the park. Lisa uses both standard and nonstandard units to measure tails, paws, noses, as well as how high the dogs can jump and many other characteristics.

 Missing Math: A Number Mystery

When a town’s numbers vanish one day, everyone discovers how difficult a world without math would be. If nobody can count, add, subtract, make phone calls, use a computer, or buy anything then life becomes impossible, so hopefully a local detective can crack the case.

Mission Addition

Miss Prime explains the basics of addition, then her students venture out into the world to add up scores, tally up their pets, sell things at a garage sale, and write word problems.

The Monster Money Book

When a young monster and a girl want to join The Monster Club, they must earn money to pay dues, help add up the group funds, and figure out what to spend it on.

Seeing Symmetry is a concept book with dozens of examples of line and rotational symmetry. From horses to hubcaps and bugs to boots, symmetry is all around us!

Subtraction Action
In seven short stories, Miss Prime’s students watch a magic show, put on a play, run an obstacle course, and try to win a prize by making things disappear.

2 X 2 = BOO! A Set of Spooky Multiplication Stories

In six short stories, silly Halloween characters such as ghosts, black cats, bats, and skeletons demonstrate the multiplication facts from 0 X 0 = 0 all the way to 5 X 5 = 25.

Whew, have I really made 12 math books?

“Reading is an Investment” teaches kids about money

While digging through the blogosphere, I stumbled over a new program in Vermont designed to teach young children basic financial concepts. Debuting this fall statewide, I’m delighted to say that one of the three books utilized will be Follow the Money.


The story begins as George, a quarter, is minted. Taken to the bank, he soon becomes change in a cash register drawer, then goes on to be spent, lost, saved, donated, and even washed in a washing machine as he travels hand to hand through the economy. Among other things, I wanted to show how people make such varied choices about how to use their money.

The second book is One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference by Katie Smith Milway, and illustrated by Eugenie Fernandes. It’s based on true story about a boy in Africa who started with one chicken and ended up with a large poultry farm. The story shows how microlending impacted not just the main character but also his family, village, and region. 

The third book is Money Madness, written by David Adler and illustrated by Edward Miller. It explores early systems of exchange such as bartering, and early forms of money including rocks, feathers, and lumps of metal. It describes the advantages of money with concrete examples to show how difficult it could be to trade bread for a house, for example.


Many of us didn’t get very much practical information about personal finance and almost certainly could have used more guidance at an early age. It’s wonderful that the State Treasurer’s Office in Vermont decided to pursue this important aspect of their students’ education. 


As John Bramley, one of the Reading is an Investment program supporters stated, “Financial literacy is more important today than ever, as shown by recent events.” I suspect we can all agree on that point.


[Update August 29, 2010] The Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy has a K-12 standards PDF available with an outline of the knowledge and skills students should possess. Topics include taking responsibility for personal financial decisions; finding/evaluating financial info from various sources; developing a plan for spending and saving; and many more. Mastering these topics is a good investment for all ages, no doubt!

Water-themed picture books

The not-yet-released book Splish Splash! by Amy Schimler looks like a cute book. I haven’t met Amy personally, but a mutual artist friend Joyce Shelton told me about her. It’s a board book with an interactive feature... to see two interior spreads and find out more about it, check out this post on her blog.


Sketches and finishes from an upcoming book about the effect of climate change on the ocean can be seen on Stephen Aitken’s blog.

You can see some gorgeous watery artwork on Janeen Mason’s website from Ocean Commotion: Sea Turtles. I worked a tropical fish puzzle of hers once and it was amazing to see the detail she puts in her artwork.


You have to go visit this site for Ocean Soup: Tide-Pool Poems written by Steve Swinburne and illustrated by Mary Peterson, it couldn’t be more charming. Bubbles rise, crabs jump out, and more. I blogged about her approach to the book on I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids) in the post Illustrating Nature.

I have a partial ms. with an ocean theme... hmmm, maybe I need to get busy on that one. These are just a few that caught my eye...if anybody has other favorite watery picture books, feel free mention them in the Comments.

Digging Up Prehistoric Reference

[This article is adapted from a post I originally wrote for I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids.]


While working on a My Teacher is a Dinosaur, I went on the hunt for good reference material. Though there are zillions of books on the multitudes of fabulous dinosaurs, it was more difficult to find information about the myriad of other intriguing prehistoric critters from cyanobacteria to giant sea scorpions to Diictodon (“the gopher of the Permian,” a reptile that lived in burrows) to Ambulocetus (“the walking whale”) and many more. In addition to having a more inclusive view of life throughout Earth’s prehistory, there had to be plenty of pictures, naturally. These are a few books I found that include dinosaurs AND equally interesting non-dinos:

Super Little Giant Book of Prehistoric Creatures
by David Lambert and The Diagram Group
2006, 288 pages, 4" X 5".

This small book has clear illustrations, timelines, overviews of the major geologicalperiods, and spotlights a good variety of animals with a description plus a summary of pronunciation of those tongue-twisting names, scientific classification, size, diet, location, and era.

The Complete Guide to Prehistoric Life
Tim Haines and Paul Chambers, the makers of the TV trilogy Walking With Dinosaurs/Beasts/Monsters
2005, 216 pages, 8.5" X 11.

This book has stunning digital illustrations with photo-realistic detail that bring the ancient world to frightening life. Presented in chronological order, there’s a written description of each animal and its lifestyle. From Thrinaxodon (a reptile with whiskers), to Giganotosaurus (the largest meat-eating dinosaur), to Entelodon (a rhino-sized pig) these are fascinating creatures to get acquainted with.

National Geographic Prehistoric Mammals
by Alan Turner, paintings by Mauricio Anton
2004, 192 pages, 8.5" X 11.25"


A splendid compendium starting with mammal-like reptiles then covering the major mammal groups such as marsupials, elephant relatives such as Deinotherium (with nice chin tusks), primitive whales, tank-like Glyptodonts, bear-dogs, giant sloths, the largest land mammal (Paraceratherium) and many more, including human ancestors. Many of the painterly illustrations also include a panorama of the habitat that existed at the time, as opposed to showing the animals on a plain white background.

The World Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Creatures
by Dougal Dixon
2007, 512 pages, 7" X 9"

One of the most comprehensive guides available, with about 1,000 animals described and nicely illustrated. After summaries of the geological timescale, habitats, and the process of fossilization, the animals march in. Starting with early tetrapods (4-limbed descendants of fish), there are giant amphibians, early reptiles and mammals, ocean-dwelling reptiles such as plesiosaurs, flying pterosaurs, armored/grazing/meat-eating dinosaurs, almost-birds, early cats, dogs, camels, rhinos, primates... they’re all there and more in a mind-boggling parade of the incredible creatures that existed ages ago.

By the way, I haven't forgotten about prehistoric plants. There aren’t many books devoted to them exclusively, but many references include at least a token section about ancient flora. And not to neglect the wonders of the Internet... you can find recently unearthed discoveries too new to be in books by putting in search terms like “giant prehistoric rodent”...some very cool critters just may pop up, such as this 1 ton wonder that did end up in my book.

When Fish Got Feet, Sharks Got Teeth, and Bugs Began to Swarm: A Cartoon Prehistory of Life Long Before Dinosaurs
by Hannah Bonner
2007, 48 pages, 8.5" X 10.5 inches

also When Bugs Were Big, Plants Were Strange, and Tetrapods Stalked the Earth: A Cartoon Prehistory of Life before Dinosaurs

These two books are a funny, informative survey of life before the dinosaurs.

Prehistoric Life: The Definitive Visual History of Life on Earth
DK Publishing
2009, 512 pages, 11.8 X 10.3 inches


My husband Andy spotted this thick tome at the bookstore, and it was a huge help. In addition to many pictures, the timelines made it much easier to put things in order.


For an incredibly comprehensive list of K-12 books about fossils, dinosaurs, and other prehistoric topics, check out this page compiled by retired science librarian Jack Mount.

Lists of recommended picture books

It’s always nice to find my books on a list... that’s how the word-of-mouth spreads about children’s books, from what the publishers say. Here are a few that I came across recently:

A list of the 10 Best Elementary Math Trade Books, featuring my Fraction Action.


Five books plus ideas and resources for teaching fractions to 2nd graders on Open Wide, Look Inside.


A nice list of math books plus lesson plan ideas, including my Missing Math.


Favorite Books for Third-Graders is quite an extensive list from the GreatSchools Book Nook Experts. They include my Mapping Penny’s World in the section called Books About School.

A short post called Learning Coin Values with Money Bingo that mentions my Follow the Money.


Top 20 Earth Day Activities and Books is comprised of two nice lists, including The Great Trash Bash on the Educationtipster blog.


Books About the USA shows the jackets and describes the content of each book, including Celebrate the 50 States.


If anyone spots a book of mine on a list, please let me know, TIA!