Rocket Science for Babies

July 1, 2017
Another board book attempts to communicate complex scientific ideas to very young children.This book and its companions, all aimed at very young children, presume the intended audience is familiar with conventional symbols to convey information, as all the explanations are made visually by means of arrows that indicate airflow. It stretches the imagination to believe toddlers will follow explanations delivered that way. Even more baffling is the assumption that toddlers have in their vocabulary arsenal words such as "flow," "angle," "deflect," "lift," and "thrust." Further complicating the attempt is the oversimplification necessary to communicate to youngsters. Boiling concepts down to such statements as "This ship is full of fuel. / If the fuel goes out, // the ship goes forward" perhaps ought to have indicated the futility of this particular effort. In companion General Relativity, there is a page with horizontal and vertical lines forming a grid. Many toddlers might identify this as a piece of mosquito netting, but they would be wrong, as it is in fact "flat space." Later they will also find out that "Mass drags space." And "Space drags mass." The explanations in Newtonian Physics and Quantum Physics are no better. Adults wishing to introduce children to the laws of physics will be more effective--and have more fun--playing with blocks, making waves in the bathtub, and launching paper planes into the air. The importance of the STEM fields in our world cannot be overstated. But the importance of understanding early childhood development when writing for preschoolers cannot be overstated either. (Board book. 2-5)

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June 1, 2017

Gr 5 Up-Ostensibly aimed at toddlers but more serviceable as stealth instruction for older students and caregivers who are a bit hazy on the basics of quantum and Newtonian physics, these board books attempt to explain concepts such as black holes, how rockets and airfoils work, and how energy-measured in quanta-moves electrons only to specific orbits around an atomic nucleus. In General Relativity, for instance, Ferrie, a physicist, uses grids and dots that are color-coded to words in the pithy captions to demonstrate how "mass drags space" and "space drags mass" and ultimately how two black holes spinning around each other "send ripples through space called gravitational waves" that "stretch and squish space throughout the universe." Each of these four outings (and there are more on the way) ends with an optimistic variation on "Now you know GENERAL RELATIVITY!" Not quite...but the taste may make the physical laws and phenomena on which our current understanding of reality is based more easily palatable when next encountered down the road. VERDICT As with Ruth Spiro's Baby Loves Quarks!, the topical reach is well beyond the grasp of even the most precocious young Einsteins, but their parents or older siblings may benefit from these quick refreshers.-John Peters, Children's Literature Consultant, New York

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