Season's Greetings

Look for new posts beginning January 7, 2013.

Cultural celebrations

Kids Around the World Celebrate! The Best Feasts and Festivals from Many Lands
by Lynda Jones
illustrated by Michele Nidenoff


An introduction to the unique feasts and festivals that are celebrated around the world. Each cultural celebration includes crafts and recipes.

A good book for the whole family.

World festivals

How I Celebrate: A Young Person's Guide to the Festivals of the World
by Pam Robson



Readers are introduced to seven young people from around the world who are supposed to act as tour guides to their special celebrations. But the book doesn't quite unfold that way. From the title and the first page, I thought I'd be reading first-person accounts of a specific festival. The characters do tell their stories in sidebars, but only sporadically. They're more often used as background illustration instead. The book is a third-person view of various celebrations honoring births, coming-of-age, weddings, independence, or holy days.   

The book could be better organized, with fewer subheadings. Every celebration uses decorations, music, dance, lights, fires or special foods, so headings using these terms aren't really necessary. Girls will be disappointed at the emphasis given to boys and their special days. A more equal approach would have been nice.

In summary, the information is good, but the presentation needs work.

Festivals of light

Lighting Our World: A Year of Celebrations
by Catherine Rondina & Jacqui Oakley


People all over the world use lights to celebrate special occasions. Whether they are welcoming the changing seasons, saluting an historic day, or marking new beginnings, these festivals of light are wonderful ways to come together.

Informative and culturally rich, this is a month-by-month guide to some of the festivals celebrated throughout the year, such as the Iroquois Midwinter Ceremony (Canada), Nowruz (Iran), Obon (Japan), Cinco de Mayo (United States), and Diwali (India).

The history of mapmaking

Where Am I? The Story of Maps and Navigation
by A.G. Smith


Large, detailed drawings and clear, understandable prose describe the evolution of map-making in this atlas-sized book. Some of the information is a bit dry, but the book need not be read in one sitting. The short paragraphs make it a good book for leisurely perusal. Kids who like trivia may pick up some interesting facts.





Mapping the World
by Sylvia A. Johnson


Maps not only show us how to get from here to there, they also tell fascinating stories. Legends, politics and religious beliefs all influence the representation of distant lands. By looking at a map, we can view the world as it once was during a particular time and place. 

The colorful maps and stories in this book provide an interesting glimpse into cartographic history. It shows how worldviews have changed over time and how modern mapmaking continues to chart new discoveries.

Finding longitude

The Man Who Made Time Travel
by Kathryn Lasky
pictures by Kevin Hawkes


In the 1700's, there were no accurate ways to determine a ship's location. While calculating latitude (north-south) was relatively easy, finding longitude (the east-west position) was a challenge due to inaccurate clocks. After numerous shipwrecks, the British Parliament promised to pay 20,000 pounds (12 million dollars) to anyone able to solve the problem. Many scientists, mathematicians and astronomers tried to win the contest, but in the end, it was clockmaker John Harrison who created the seafaring timepiece now known as the chronometer.

In this well-told picture book biography, Kathryn Lasky tells the story of a remarkable man who spent a lifetime perfecting an amazing invention.





The Longitude Prize
by Joan Dash


Although John Harrison's invention was truly revolutionary, the Board of Longitude refused to recognize him for more than 30 years. Determined to favor the lunar system of determining longitude and not wanting to award the prize to a self-educated man with no credentials, they threw many obstacles in his way.

Dramatic accounts of life at sea, the explorers who braved them, and the political machinations of the time form the backdrop of this riveting book. Enhanced by Dusan Petricic's clever drawings, Harrison's story is one of struggle, persistence and stubbornness in the face of prevailing odds.

Great mapmakers

The Road to There: Mapmakers and Their Stories
by Val Ross


Fraud artists who deliberately distorted maps, explorers who lost their lives, travelers who risked altitude sickness, these were some of the men and women who mapped the world. With reproductions of important maps and exciting introductions before each chapter, this is a well-researched and informative book. Each chapter sounds like a suspenseful adventure story. Along the way, readers will discover how the ocean, the universe, and even the streets of London were mapped.

Highly entertaining.

Beautiful plankton

Ocean Drifters: A Secret World Beneath the Waves
by Richard R. Kirby


Within the pages of this amazing book, meet the alien and beautiful phytoplankton, zooplankton and sea creature larvae that populate our oceans. These microscopic algae and the tiny animals that eat them underpin the whole marine food chain, provide the world with oxygen, and play an essential role in the global carbon cycle.

Even though the text is highly scientific, children will be fascinated by the photographs and can pore over them for hours. This is a book that will be revisited again and again, by which time they'll be ready to tackle the essays.

Highly recommended.

crab larvae

sea butterfly, aka predatory sea slug

Microscopic plants and animals

Protozoans, Algae & Other Protists
by Steve Parker


Protists are microscopic life-forms. They live in nearly every plant, animal, and fungus. More importantly, they form the basis of plankton, a vital food source for all kinds of sealife, and in turn, us.

This book is a good introduction to the protist kingdom, from tiny amoebas and paramecium, to colorful algae and flowing slime molds. It provides an up-close look at the parts of a protist, its life cycle, and its means of reproduction. It also looks at some of the protists which are harmful to humans. 

Gruesome and fascinating.





The Protoctist Kingdom
by Marc Zabkudoff


This book provides even more information about the different kinds of protists. It describes how protists grow, reproduce, eat, and move, and why they are important. 

With mysterious, close-up photographs.

Ocean life

This is the Sea that Feeds Us
by Robert F. Baldwin
illustrated by Don Dyen


Lilting verse reminiscent of the house that Jack built, introduces children to the life cycle of the sea. From the zillions of plankton to the hungry fish, along with the whales, sharks, and snails, these are the creatures adrift in the sea that feed us.





The Sea, the Storm, and the Mangrove Tangle
by Lynne Cherry


The story of a propagule (a sprouting seed) from a mangrove island which is carried to a faraway lagoon. From that propagule, a little mangrove tree grows and grows, eventually forming a living island that provides shelter, food and safety for a whole community of sea creatures. The endpapers show the location of mangroves throughout the world, while the introduction and author's note stresses the importance of mangroves to the marine ecosystem.