FASTER THAN A JET, BIGGER THAN A WHALE: AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO MEASURING OUR WORLD — Review

Thought for the Day:

“You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it.”
 
~ Octavia E. Butler ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

We all need to be reminded of good writing habits now and then. HERE is a good post from Good Story Company by Amy Wilson about dialogue tags.

Tiffany Yates Martin’s site, FoxPrint Editorial, is full of great writing information. HERE she has a terrific post with 5 Ways to Create Story Momentum.

I read a really interesting article HERE on the Literary Hub written by Amara Lakhous called Imagination is Not Enough: Why Fiction Needs Fieldwork. This is something every fiction writer should read.

Well, the opening day of baseball wasn’t all I hoped it would be. We had our star pitcher on the mound, but his stuff just wasn’t working, or else the mighty Yankees were just seeing him really well. It was a rout. In fact, the Yankees swept the three-game series. But the good news is there are another 159 games in the season. I’m confident my Giants will get better and better as time goes on. (Yes, I am an eternal optimist!) This will be my last post for a few weeks. I will be taking the month of April off to prepare for my trip and spend three weeks wandering around the eastern U.S. with a quick trip to Canada. Toronto is going to be the most challenging park on my trip. It’s a really tight schedule in that part of my travels. It sure would make my life easier if baseball teams didn’t travel half the time! If I don’t visit blogs while I’m gone, I apologize. I just don’t know how much time I will have to keep up with reading blogs.

I had a chance to snag a couple more middle-grade picture books for review recently. FASTER THAN A JET, BIGGER THAN A WHALE: AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO MEASURING OUR WORLD, written by Andrea Minoglio and illustrated by Bethany Lord, looked like a book that would find a great audience with middle-graders. I like books that are packed with information and that present it in a fun way. This fills the bill. And what kid would be able to resist that cover? Here is the review I wrote for the Los Angeles Book Review.

The natural curiosity of youngsters can keep the adults around them trying to answer what seems like unending questions. How long are dinosaurs? How fast do sloths walk? How far does a kangaroo jump? How long does a shark live? What creatures poop the most? Trying to answer those questions in terms that make sense to kids is no easy task. This book will help answer many of those questions with good writing and lots of excellent graphics to help with the understanding. Some of the comparisons are crystal clear, such as describing the longest passenger train as being as long as 80 buses lined up, but others will not be very meaningful for most kids, such as describing the human circulatory system as more than three times the length of the Pan-American Highway. That said, the book is very well-written in a conversational style, inviting and appropriate for young readers. The illustrations are stylized and beautifully rendered. The layout of the book is graphically pleasing and will help to keep young readers engaged. Curious kids, and aren’t they all curious, will read this book over and over again.

Please don’t forget to check for other Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday posts at Greg Pattridge’s blog HERE.