Kids

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Alphabet Soup Special: Summer Reading Club Kickoff!

Whoo's Awake in the Night? Presented by the Virginia Wildlife Center

Author of the Month: Christopher Paul Curtis

Book Buzz: Our Latest Picks for Kids

Eight Cousins, or the Aunt-Hill, by Louisa May Alcott

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

Kids Blog

Spring Hope

Children's Book Columns, LibraryPoint Blog, Rebecca Purdy, Seasons, Spring-fiction, Kids Blog, Picture Books

02/08/2011 - 2:39pm

I have hope for spring! Every year, I reach a point where I can’t bear another minute of cold, ice or snow, let alone the barren, brown landscape. Then February and my first harbinger of spring arrives, the Maymont Flower & Garden Show. Despite it all, I am filled with hope. If the weather is wearing you down, a book full of spring may be just what you need to keep trudging along!

Sharing the Seasons, selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, celebrates each season with poems and David Diaz’s vibrant illustrations. My favorite spring poem is by Fran Haraway and describes someone who ignores the chilly, north wind, the leafless trees and the lack of crocuses and though it’s much too cold, sits outside. Focusing instead on the almond tree buds and insisting, despite all other evidence that spring is here.

Like Old Bear in the book by Kevin Henkes, I even dream of spring. Throughout his hibernation, Old Bear dreams of being a cub again with “flowers as big as trees” and a crocus he can take a nap in. His dreams progress through the seasons, the palette changing from the pinks and purples of spring to the yellows and oranges of autumn until he finally awakens. At long last he pokes his head out and “it took him a minute to realize that he wasn’t dreaming,” spring was indeed here!

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Car Science: An Under-the-Hood, Behind-the-Dash Look at How Cars Work by Richard Hammond

Cars, Driving, engineering, LibraryPoint Blog, physics, Virginia Johnson, Shelf Life Blog, Book Buzz Blog, Kids Blog, Science & Nature, Science and Technology

02/03/2011 - 2:02pm

Kids who like car books soon outgrow the ones with nice pictures and simple diagrams—and then what? What do you give a car-crazy kid who – might – be drawn into the fascinating world of science and engineering if he had the right teacher? Most car books for older kids are chock full of dull details and have no excitement whatsoever. They drone. They drag. They discourage with their very verbiage. We’ve got a cure for that. Richard Hammond, star of the BBC’s Top Gear and past host of Brainiac: Science Abuse, has teamed with picture-mad DK publishing to bring off Car Science: An Under-the-Hood, Behind-the-Dash Look at How Cars Work.

The book is divided into four very fun, very illustrated sections: Power, Speed, Handling, and Technology. There’s never a dull moment as Mr. Hammond divulges details of “…everything you need to know to be a real driving expert. How a turbocharger works, how gasoline is made; we’ll look inside gearboxes and learn why a Formula 1 car’s brakes glow pink when it’s stopping. And, at the end, we’ll look at the kind of cars that we might be driving in the future.”

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Simply Circuits

Kids Homework Help, Virginia Johnson, Kids Blog

02/01/2011 - 7:28pm

How does a flashlight work?
By using a battery hooked up to an electrical circuit system.

How does an electrical circuit system work?
A battery has negative electric charges and positive electric charges. If you look at a battery, you will see that there is a + sign at one end and a - sign at the other. The opposite charges are drawn to each other, but without an easy path, they will remain separated. That's where a circuit comes in handy.

A Power-full Bridge

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