“Pick Me Up: Stuff You Need to Know,” by Jeremy Leslie and David Roberts (DK, 352 pages, $29.99)
With its eye-damaging 3-D cover and a dazzling format that skips incongruously from a multipage spread of the planets (oops! Pluto snuck in before its reclassification) to the links between war and baked beans, “Pick Me Up” is as appealing as it is unconventional.
The authors present concept links as complex as DNA to the Human Genome Project and cells, demystifying a daunting subject with tangible references:
“If you unraveled all the DNA in your body, the thin thread would stretch to the Moon 170 times and back.”
Ages 9 to 12.
“Great Estimations,” by Bruce Goldstone (Henry Holt, 32 pages, $16.95)
“Ton,” by Taro Miura (Chronicle Books, 40 pages, $15.95)
Both of these books present numbers and weights as concrete images with the same spirit of fun that characterizes the buoyant cockeyed.com website’s “How Much is Inside?” feature.
To illustrate the difference in multiples, Goldstone photographs cereal O’s in groups of 100, 1,000 and an avalanche of thousands spilling from a cereal box. It’s an amusing way to learn about estimates.
Miura’s book uses illustrations to convey the difference between a 50-pound girder that one man can hold, a 100-pound wheelbarrow load, a 1,000-pound dolly load of milk, a 100-ton container hauled by a train, and a 10,000-ton load on a cargo ship. Like “Great Estimations,” this book makes it possible to grasp a number that most children find unimaginable. Ages 2-8
“Life on a Famine Ship: A Journal of the Irish Famine,” by Duncan Crosbie, illustrated by Brian Lee and Peter Bull Studios (Barron’s, 25 pages, $16.99)
Pop-up and lift-the-flap books are emerging as a new genre for middle readers.
“Life on a Famine Ship” bears more in common with a Web page than conventional nonfiction history books aimed at elementary and middle-school readers. The flaps lift to reveal nuggets of information and explanatory illustrations of unfamiliar things like clamps, the earth-covered mounds made by alternating layers of potatoes and straw.
Flaps reveal what Irish cottages looked like after a landlord tore off the roof and threw out their meager possessions, and how to distinguish Ireland’s counties.
The pop-up of the ship illustrates proportion and scale along with the cramped quarters where Irish refugees stayed during the long trip to the United States. It’s not only for reluctant readers and children who like visuals with their narrative, but also suggests a novel format for school assignments and History Day projects. The publisher says ages 4 to 8, but older siblings will take a look too.
“The Story of Everything,” by Neal Layton, paper engineering by Corina Fletcher (Barron’s, 30 pages, $18.99)
Layton’s extremely condensed history of the universe (“From the Big Bang until Now in 11 pop-up spreads”) won’t be popular with the creation-science crowd, along with scientists who are finding that humans may not be the most intelligent species on Earth.
Its spare text and bright pop-up Big Bang, prickly dinosaurs and lift-the-flap surprise revelations of the modern descendants of Sarkastodons and Indricotheriums will appeal to the conventional audience of pop-up/tear-apart books. Ages 4 to 8.
“The Stunning Science of Everything,” by Nick Arnold and Tony De Saulles (Scholastic, 96 pages, $10.99)
Fans of Steve Spangler – and who isn’t fond of the Colorado teacher who famously turns diet soda and Mentos into fountains? – will love this collection of condensed facts and trivia. They’ll love the Albert Einstein remark on page 9: “He said he was amazed that lessons in schools hadn’t destroyed the spirit of curiosity in children.”
“Bloody Body Bits” (page 52) includes a graphic reason to brush assiduously in the course of a tour that owes a debt to “Magic Schoolbus: For Lunch.” Also fun: Molecules Explained (page 26). Ages 9 to 12.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-954-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com
