Sheila Rowan's Reading List

"Yes, and it’s wonderfully written by Steve Mould! This book is very educational, but in a totally different way. Again, some parts of it are just fascinating. I was looking at the eyelash mites earlier, with this wonderful picture of the tails of the little mites sticking out of a follicle. As adults, we often don’t like to think about the slightly grosser side of things, but that’s life, it’s our life and it’s important to understand it. It’s quite appealing to kids, who really are interested in the squishy and bacterial side of things, the micro-animals. And the book has got wonderful, wonderful pictures. Yes, being able to understand the difference between bacteria and viruses and the consequences of that difference is very helpful. So I think it’s a great book with some beautiful, big, bright illustrations—like the one of a tomato that’s gone mouldy, really nice and squishy. The book uses different ways to captures one’s interest."

"Making with States of Matter , again, I thought was very interesting. It has a scientific theme, which is the different states of matter—solid, liquid, gas—and how those change. But it comes at it from an angle that I thought was very nice. The state of matter is the theme, but there’s interest in art. For example, you can use the changes of state to do chocolate art. Or make slushies. Sign up here for our newsletter featuring the best children’s and young adult books, as recommended by authors, teachers, librarians and, of course, kids. I liked the fact that while you were tackling an area that’s scientific—changes of state—some of the practical applications of that are in there too: like making a desert cooler using flower pots. The book allows for people to be drawn in who might come to the topic from an artistic interest. It overlaps with broader creative interests, perhaps, folks who might not have so obviously engaged in the topic if it was just presented as science. It’s an opportunity to come at this from a very different perspective and a different set of interests. There’s a section on paper making that I find very appealing. Yes! And I think you picked my favourite example. You’re stuck in a life raft, miles from land, with nothing but seawater to drink. The book shows you how to set up a little distilling system to make some fresh water. There’s also a profile of the woman who worked on this, a portable solar still, Maria Telkes. I was very pleased to see that in there. What an interesting topic! I think it’s fantastic. All of these books are quite beautiful and so I am enthusiastic about hearing which book is the winner and the comments from our final judges. Exactly. The under-14s are the folks who are the audience for these books, so they are the right people to tell us what the final selection should be. Aren’t they fantastic? And what a lovely spread of topics. It’s nice to see we’ve covered the squishy bacteria in biology, biographies and profiles of science superstars when they were young, computers and coding, the heavens and the periodic table. It’s quite a selection. What I also really like is that people often think of science as something you can draw a box around and then put over there, because it’s a thing, ‘science.’ But with many of these books, the broader connections, the connections to everyday life come through. That’s true of 100 Things to Know About Numbers, Computers and Coding in particular but also the book about the periodic table, The Element in the Room . That relevance is nice to see coming through in these books. Read more in the best books of 2019 interview series."