Plants We Wear

November 1, 2008
Gr 2-5-These colorful, cleanly designed books incorporate activities designed to exercise basic science skills, such as observation, estimation, and comparison, but are uneven in quality. In the first book, seed, spore, bulb, cutting, and division are given the once-over; while the text states that tulips and daffodils grow from bulbs, there is no explanation of how bulbs are formed. "Flowers" neglects to identify and label the parts of a flower, concentrating instead on seeds and pollination. "Sunlight" identifies the three basic needs of plants and provides a very simple summary of photosynthesis and the movement of food and nutrients through a plants vascular systemwithout using the words photosynthesis or vascular. "Plants We Eat", "Trees", and "Healing Plants" are stronger titles, offering basic overviews of their topics. However, while the photographs are clear and informative, all of the books suffer from a lack of labeled diagrams.

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