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CM . . . . Volume XXIII Number 10 . . . . November 11, 2016
excerpts:
Originally published in Spanish, Your Body from 1 to 10 and The Solar System from 1 to 10 have been translated for an English-speaking audience. Despite the "1 to 10" in their titles, what these two books are not is learn-to-count books for the very young. As the series title, "Science for Counting", indicates, the books' contents actually focus on science, with each book having a single theme. The two books share common design elements: each "number" is treated in a pair of facing pages, with one normally carrying a full-colour photo connected to the pages' topic and the other the brief text. The two excerpts above reflect the length and depth of the text. The content of Your Body from 1 to 10 includes heart, lungs, skin layers, teeth, the senses, eye muscles, alimentary canal, wrist bones, parts of the brain, and fingers. The Solar System from 1 to 10 includes the Sun, the asteroid belt separating the inner and outer planets, meteorite types, the moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo, parts of a comet, the moon landings, the principal rings of Jupiter, the planets of the Solar System, astronauts crewing the ISS, and the Sojourner rover on Mars. The authors needed to work harder to find an example for 9 as the example provided, "9 astronauts aboard the space station ISS", is really more like the answer to a bar trivia question: "What is the largest number of astronauts to ever be aboard ISS at the same time?" [A trick question as the answer total includes the seven astronauts who had just arrived plus the two who were about to return to Earth.] The authors, for example, could have used Pluto, the downgraded planet, to introduce the concept of dwarf planets. Though I said these two books are not counting books, they do contain elements that one might expect to find in a counting book. For example, each "number" page contains a number line with the focal number highlighted so that the reader can see where the number resides in the sequence of numbers from 1-10. Usually, a counting book contains visuals of objects that are to be counted and which are to total the page's focal number. The contents of both books, however, initially seem to be inconsistent as to whether or not there actually is something to be counted. For instance, in The Solar System from 1 to 10, the illustration for the four moons Galileo discovered orbiting Jupiter are shown, but, on the previous page for the three types of meteorites that fall to earth, only the Barringer Crater in Arizona appears. Perhaps readers will come to have the same "Aha!!!" moment I eventually had when I realized that the coloured circles and rings dotted over each number's pages were meant to be the things I was to count. Because the authors had not previously alerted me to the rings'/circles' purpose, I had just been considering them to be decorative "annoyances" that had often been overlaid on an excellent photo. Identifying the audience level for Your Body from 1 to 10 is complicated by the fact that children, frequently preschoolers, often appear in the book's photos, thereby erroneously suggesting that this title actually is a counting book. However, the maturity of the text quickly contradicts this notion. Nonetheless, early schoolers could be embarrassed to be seen with what could, visually at least, be construed as a baby book. The Solar System from 1 to 10 does not have this illustration difficulty as its subject matter, with the exception of the moon landings, did not require the visual presence of humans. Two errors, one spelling and the other factual, occur on the "10" page of The Solar System from 1 to 10. The opening text reads:
The word "weighs" should be "weight", and the "Mars Pathfinder Fact Sheet" provided by NASA states that Sojourner's mobile mass was 11.5 kg., not 10 kgs. Another error occurs in the text related to comets. The text reads: "With each rotation around the Sun, the comet becomes smaller." Like planets, comets revolve, not rotate, around the Sun. Both books also contain a small design flaw which involves the placement of illustrations in relationship to the page gutter. In Your Body from 1 to 10, the number 4 is associated with "4 groups of teeth", but the illustration of an open mouth is centred over the gutter, a placement which makes it impossible to see all of the incisors. In The Solar System from 1 to 10, should any reader actually be counting the rings and circles, they will only be able to find nine on the 10 page as the tenth is buried in the gutter. Additionally, the books' design could have been significantly enhanced by having some labels placed on the photos in order to connect the visual content with that of the text. In Your Body from 1 to 10, readers could have more easily identified the four teeth groups described in the text if the teeth seen in the open-mouth photo had been tagged. In the same book, readers looking at the x-ray of a pair of hands and wrists would have benefited from having the four wrist bones specifically identified. The value of a couple of the illustrations in The Solar System from 1 to 10 would have also been enhanced by some labels, with one example being the visual identification of a comet's five parts. Though short in length and light in content, these two titles in the "Science for Counting" series will find a home in school libraries where their visually attractive format and interesting subject matter will attract readers, especially reluctant ones, who prefer fact over fiction. Recommended. Dave Jenkinson, CM's editor, lives in Winnipeg, MB, where he still stubbornly considers Pluto to be a planet. Copyright © the Manitoba Library Association. Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without permission.
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