Energy Makes Things Happen (Let's Read-and-Find-out Science Series) » (1ST)

Kimberly Brubaker Bradley is the author of Energy Makes Things Happen and Pop!, an Outstanding Science Trade Book for Children, in the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science series. She has a degree in chemistry from Smith College and lives with her husband and two children in Bristol, Tennessee.

Did you know that energy comes from the food you eat? From the sun and wind? From fuel and heat?

You get energy every time you eat. You transfer energy to other things every time you play baseball. In this book, you can find out all the ways you and everyone on earth need energy to make things happen.

School Library Journal

Gr 1-3-This worthy title uses familiar examples and a clear focus to introduce basic scientific concepts. An opening scene shows children playing ball, flying kites, and cooking and eating hot dogs, with a rock on a hill in the background. Bradley explains that inherent in the scenarios are different kinds of energy. She then tells how the kite uses the wind, the rock converts stored energy into moving energy, and so on, and discusses how the greatest source of power, the sun, makes food, fossil fuels, light, heat, and wind. The author intentionally makes this a very general introduction; not even moderately difficult words such as "potential" or "kinetic" are used. A simple experiment and a game are appended. While rolling a toy car into a stationary one and observing the result can be easily done, tracing energy back to the sun will probably need adult guidance. Meisel's color illustrations of cheerful multiethnic children match the level and tone of the text perfectly, make it more comprehensible, and add to the book's appeal. While educational theorists believe that children can't grasp abstractions until at least age seven, younger readers will gain some familiarity with the concept even if they don't really understand it. Larry White's Energy: Simple Experiments for Young Scientists (Millbrook, 1995) offers a more sophisticated and detailed introduction, along with many experiments, for older readers, but Bradley's title is a good first exposure to the subject.-Louise L. Sherman, formerly at Anna C. Scott School, Leonia, NJ Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.