Category Archives: Kids Reviews

Do Try This at Home: Cook It! – Jon Milton ***

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This is a bit of an oddity, and I can’t help but suspect someone somewhere had a meeting and said ‘Science books for kids don’t sell very well. But cookery books do sell well. So Screenshot_16_05_2013_17_18let’s do a cookery book and sneak a bit of science into it. As such it does kind of work, but it could have been a lot better.

Most of the book is really just a basic kid’s cook book. Nothing wrong with that – it just isn’t particularly relevant to a science site. They do stick in little comment boxes to tell you the ‘science bit’, but it’s rather like those cosmetic adverts – the science bit doesn’t really explain itself very well. So, for instance, we are told that when you cook an egg the proteins in it change. Fine and dandy – but we aren’t told what proteins are, why they change and why this results in the effects we see. It is information with no context and hence relatively little value.

Slightly better are a series of experiments at the back of the book that let you make an indicator with red cabbage or see what happens when you put a pen into a jar of rice. But they aren’t quite enough to save the book. It’s fine if you want a nice children’s cookbook – but it’s no challenger for Horrible Science. (And I find it really irritating it spends so long advertising the Science Museum’s madcap (ahem) ‘punk science’ team. Grow up lads.)

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Review by Jo Reed

Supergeek! Dinosaurs, Brains and Supertrains – Glenn Murphy ***

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There’s nothing children’s science likes better than a format – and that’s what this book is all about. It’s the first of a ‘Supergeek!’ series, with the format consisting of (in Screenshot_03_05_2013_16_23this case) four sections of questions, followed by rather more detailed answers. The sections seem pretty well randomly cobbled together – for the first title they are dinosaurs; brains, senses and feelings; earthquakes, volcanoes and natural disasters; and trains, planes and transport. Yes, the theme is ‘no theme.’

I’ll be honest, it doesn’t work wonderfully well for me. You can in principle read the second half as a book, but it is a very plonking book because it is a set of entries that happen to be answers to fairly random questions. As for the quiz part, it seems a bit laboured, merely requiring the reader to have memorised a whole string of facts, rather than work anything out, geek style. And some of these ‘facts’ are fairly uninspiring. Do we really care how many rotor blades there are on a standard Bell helicopter?

If you are the kind of young reader who likes working through a quiz, popping to the back of the book to check your own answers, then this will appeal (though even you might be baffled by the selection of topics), and inevitably it will be bought by a fair number of aunties. But I don’t think it’s much of a challenger to the likes of the Horrible Science series.

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Review by Jo Reed

Chemistry (getting a big reaction) – Dan Green & Basher ***

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We’ve not been awfully kind about some of the predecessors of these strange little illustrated science books ‘created by Basher’ (whatever that means). The format is odd – very small in many cases (they do have some larger editions, but this isn’t one of them), half the space given up to illustrations that don’t add any information whatever, and a really irritating text that is written in the first person, apparently by the subject of the page. So in this case you will see entries by a molecule, an acid and so on. Cringeworthy.

But having said all that, for some reason, the chemistry entry didn’t seem anywhere near as bad as some of the others. I think the reason is that there is a lot more useful text than in some examples. It does really tell you quite a bit about, say, acids, even if it is with that irritating first person spin.

The book doesn’t limit itself to the chemicals and their components – there are sections on lab equipment, reactions and more.

Despite my relative enthusiasm, I can’t bring myself to be too positive, though. The text is too sophisticated for the age group the design seems aimed at – it’s a bit like the South Park of children’s popular science books (without the rude bits). So I’d say the text is probably 9 to 12 (apart from the first person aspect) while the design is more 6 to 9. Oh, well. It’s definitely an improvement on some of the others.

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Review by Brian Clegg

Stars and the Dust that Made Us – Raman Prinja ****

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This is, without doubt, one of the stronger members of the ‘The Universe Rocks’ series – helped by the fact that there are few more amazing topics than stars. In the book, young readers are taken through how stars are born, the life cycle of the Sun, different types of stars, the role of stars in making the other elements from hydrogen, and the final destinations of stars, including, of course, neutron stars and black holes. There’s some really meaty material here and though Raman Prinja does sometimes leave out the best bits, there’s enough to real grab the imagination and inspire a young astronomer.

What is also good is that the activities are quite strong and well focussed on the subject. We have had complaints with some of the other books in the series that creaky old science projects (like the dreaded baking powder and vinegar volcano) are hauled out of the closet to pad out a book where it’s difficult to produce appropriate activities, but in this title the activities are spot on. We are invited to make an experiment to simulate why the stars twinkle, we do an ingenious experiment with a table tennis ball and a tennis ball to see a kind of shock wave in action, and we take a look at the stars themselves to perform a survey and make up our own constellations. Excellent.

There are a few quibbles. The whole series is too dark and low contrast. It’s always a problem with illustrated books on space – the publisher can’t resist the temptation of using a black background for many of the pages, but the result is a rather murky visual style. I also did think there were some good bits missed. No reference to the role of quantum tunnelling in fusion in the Sun, for instance, and it’s not made clear enough that stars can’t go beyond iron in producing elements without the help of a supernova. Similarly I would have liked to have seen not just why stars twinkle, but why planets don’t. But there is plenty to enjoy.

Overall, a good introduction to stars and nucleosynthesis for the young reader that is definitely recommended.

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Review by Brian Clegg

To the Planets and Beyond – Raman Prinja ***

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Another in the ‘The Universe Rocks’ series of slim illustrated astronomy/cosmology books for children, this is a guide to the planets, where they came from and what’s out there around other stars.

Generally speaking a good addition to the series, with some good solid content, though I’m not sure that the two page spread on volcanoes really deserves to be there except to justify having that science fair classic, the baking soda and vinegar volcano as one of the four activity pages. Let’s face it, there’s a limit to the activities you can do when you are dealing with planets.

I was also less than overwhelmed by the activity of making a sun dial – not because there’s anything wrong with it as an activity, but rather because it’s stretching things to make it have a lot to do with planets. The best of the activities by far was unrolling 90 sheets of toilet roll and using this as a scale model of the solar system. This really was a fun and original suggestion.

Plenty of reasonable content, then (though the overall feel, as with many of the books in this series was rather too dark and muddy in appearance), but not the most inspiring of the books.

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Review by Jo Reed

Crackling Chemistry – Steve Parker ***

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Like the other books in this ‘Science Crackers’ series, Crackling Chemistry consists of a series of well-illustrated double page spreads, combining factoids, more detailed information, photographs and diagrams in the typical, rather messy scrapbook style. Interlaced with the information pages are five double page spreads of ‘hands on’ activities. You have to be fairly easily pleased to describe them as ‘fantastic’ as the cover does – I’d be more inclined to call them safe and simple. The closest we get to exciting is a vinegar and baking powder volcano. It’s also the closest we get to chemistry.

This is because, remarkably, there is hardly any chemistry in the book. In part this is, I suspect, a side effect of the national curriculum in the UK for this age of children. That too has hardly any chemistry. Instead we get a good few pages on materials, whether things are hard and soft and mixtures. We then move onto freezing and boiling, states of matter, heat and conductivity. Unless I missed it there was no mention of elements, compounds, reactions and… well, pretty well all of chemistry.

It’s not a bad book – but it really should be Marvellous Materials, or even A Bit More Physics, rather than Crackling Chemistry.

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Review by Jo Reed

Spacecraft and the Journey into Space – Raman Prinja ***

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Space travel is the ultimate mix of potential excitement and factual disappointment, so it’s a difficult one to get the balance right. The fact is it’s very difficult to get out into space, and even harder to get out of the solar system (in terms of doing it in a practical time). Raman Prinja’s slim volume for children gets the balance pretty much right. At this age, you’ve got to get plenty of excitement in there – but there needs to be some realism too.

I like the way the book starts with telescopes, which gives the vast majority of our ‘exploration’ of space and probably always will. And there’s a fair summary of what we’ve achieved (though I think there could have been a bit more on the Voyager missions, especially as Voyager 1 was leaving the solar system around the time the book was written). There could have been a bit more too on future possibilities, I think. To suggest solar sails could get a spacecraft to ‘super fast speeds’ is probably impractical – they seem much more the canal barge of space – and I’d have liked to have seen some serious future spaceship engines and perhaps even a bit about the speculative warp drive.

There are a few, rather low key activities like making a rainbow (why?) and a balloon rocket. These perhaps could have been beefed up a bit. The cover’s a bit dull too – in fact, the real thing was rather more murky than the image shown here.

Overall an entirely acceptable addition to the ‘The Universe Rocks’ series, but probably not the most outstanding.

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Review by Jo Reed

Galaxies and the Runaway Universe – Raman Prinja ****

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Cosmology might seem a heavy subject to hit children at the top of primary school/starting secondary school, which the level of the text in this smart looking (if rather darkly shaded) book suggests. But that would be wrong – they love stuff about space and the universe, and Raman Prinja gives it to them wholesale.

There really is a lot of material here considering it’s a slim 32 pages. We cover the Milky Way, galaxies, the big bang, the expanding universe, dark matter/energy and the fate of the universe in a series of well written and thoughtful two page spreads with plenty of illustrations (if, as already mentioned, it can be a bit murky). There are also some activities, though there are limitations to what you can do experimentally with galaxies and the universe, so these aren’t overwhelmingly exciting (two out of four are different ways to make spiral patterns).

This is very close to being a five star book. The only things that held me off is that there could have been a bit more fun detail. So, for instance, one of the better activities is using a balloon to model the expanding universe. Good stuff. But Raman Prinja doesn’t point out the bit that usually gets kids going, which is that the big bang happened right here in front of our nose, because when you squish that balloon up, every point in the universe is in the big bang. We are sweepingly told that three quarters of the universe is dark energy – but there is no explanation of the bit kids always query: how come we are treating energy as stuff? And there is at least one historical error: we are told ‘Almost 2000 years ago the ancient Greeks thought the Earth was at the centre [of the universe].’ Unfortunately the ancient Greeks no longer existed per se 2000 years ago.

Good stuff, though, and recommended for that 9-12 age group.

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Review by Jo Reed

Fizzing Physics – Steve Parker ***

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Another in the ‘Science Crackers’ series, I was rather less impressed by the physics title than I was by that on astronomy. It doesn’t help that physics is probably the worst handled science subject in the primary school curriculum, and the series is quite strongly curriculum driven. But it’s more than that – I think it took the wrong way in.

In effect we lead into physics with engineering – the first two page spread is on machines. But this misses the point of what physics is about. It would have been much better to have lead on stuff – what matter is – also part of the curriculum and real physics.

That apart there are the usual topics you would expect (too much of the things you would expect for me) – forces, friction, light, sound, electricity and magnetism, but each is covered in a very summary way, so summary in fact that most of the essentials are avoided. Occasionally this even goes as far as getting the science wrong. So, for instance, we are told mirrors flip left and right. They don’t. More often it is just clumsy representation. So light, for instance, is only really described as ‘rays’ no mention of photons or waves. And the separate sections on electricity and magnetism give no suggestion that there is any relation between the two.

It’s not a disaster. There’s a fair amount of the basics, and the little hands-on activities are quite entertaining. But it could have been so much better. In essence it ignores the good bits, keeps the boring bits, then over-simplifies them until they are almost not there. Again, it’s partly the curriculum to blame – but only partly.

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Review by Brian Clegg

Bubbling Biology – Steve Parker ****

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It’s likely that this 32 page, medium format heavily illustrated book was primarily produced for the education market, but we don’t need to hold that against it, as it is still content-packed and made interesting enough to give to a curious young reader as well.

The title is biology, but the content is rather more about natural history – something I suspect that is imposed by an attempt to match the UK national curriculum. This means there are lots of good basics about animals and plants. Apart from the creatures themselves we look at senses, feeding and respiration, reproduction and survival. This is all served up in pages with little bite sized chunks of text and good illustrations, mostly photographic, but with drawings in the activity sections.

These are surprisingly good with the inevitable sprouting of seeds in a jam jar (come on, you couldn’t miss that) but also rather more surprising some experiments on reflexes and on optical illusions to explore the senses a little. Good fun.

My main regret is that we don’t get any of what are probably the two core strands of biology now – molecular biology and evolution. Neither gets a mention. So nothing about DNA or genetics, no explanation of where all those animals and plants came from. It’s a shame.

Overall, though, given the limitations of the topic, a sound and entertaining effort.

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Review by Jo Reed