Ada has always been endlessly curious. Even when her fact-finding missions and elaborate scientific experiments don’t go as planned, Ada learns the value of thinking her way through problems and continuing to stay curious.
An age-appropriate introduction to the scientific method empowers kids to form hypotheses and test their theories. The experiments are rated for difficulty and potential mess, so adults know how much supervision is required. Easy-to-follow instructions ensure educational—and edible!—results.
Have you ever tried to learn more about some incredible thing, only to be frustrated by incomprehensible jargon? This author uses line drawings and only the thousand (or, rather, “ten hundred”) most common words to provide simple explanations for some of the most interesting stuff there is, including:
Jack and his foster siblings, Ava and Matt, are not your typical kids—they’re geniuses. Well, Ava and Matt are. Ava speaks multiple languages and builds robots for fun, and Matt is an expert astronomer and math whiz. As for Jack, it’s hard to stand out when surrounded by geniuses all the time.
Mary is an enterprising young inventor. One day she realizes she has no friends, so she decides a pet will do the trick. But the pet Mary wants isn't one she can easily buy...so she makes one―and it's a sheep, of course! Soon Mary, her sheep, and her new invention gain her popularity and friends. But when she starts making sheep for her new friends, chaos abounds.
A little girl and her canine assistant set out to make the most magnificent thing. But after much hard work, the end result is not what the girl had in mind. Frustrated, she quits. Her assistant suggests a long walk, and as they walk, it slowly becomes clear what the girl needs to do to succeed. A charming story that will give kids the most magnificent thing: perspective!
Charlotte is a serious scientist. She solves important problems by following the scientific method. She has all the right equipment: protective glasses, a lab coat, a clipboard, and a magnifying glass. What she doesn’t have is space. She has so many brothers and sisters (she is a rabbit, after all) that she is too squished to work on her experiments!
To Charlie’s classmates, it seems like the kiwi bird got a raw deal: It barely has wings at all, so it can’t fly, and its long whiskers are more like a cat’s. How can such an unlucky bird even survive in the wild? But Charlie thinks the kiwi is cool, and with the help of his great-great-great-great-great-grandpa Charles Darwin, he travels back in time to learn how the kiwi evolved from a dinosaur-like creature to its present-day wingless state. Learning that “little changes in each generation can add up to BIG changes,” Charlie begins to understand that the kiwi bird’s flightless ways and catlike whiskers might be a bit odd, but they are exactly what has helped the species survive over thousands of years!
