Exploring the depths

Everyone loves a mystery, right?  And what’s more mysterious than regions and realms we can only imagine, know little about and rarely see.

Under Water, Under Earth: there are whole worlds to explore just below the surface

by Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski is a book that will captivate 8 to 12 year-olds easily and even older if kids (or adults) are into information presented in a highly visual and interesting format.

This oversized book is divided into two sections each starting from one of the covers and meeting in the middle. The reader views the book by turning it on its side. From one side we are introduced to the fascinating and mysterious world of what lies underwater. Though it includes lakes and sinkholes, the book predominately focuses on the ocean. Besides looking at the various plants and animals that live beneath water from shallow waters to the deepest known point, a great deal of information is given about human activities, as well. Like how we submerge ourselves using diving equipment, submarines, submersibles, or drilling platforms. The book starts with the shallowest levels of life and phenomena to those found deep, deep down underwater.

Flip the book around and we start to learn all about the wondrous worlds found under our feet. Again, there is a focus on plants and wildlife that depend on earth to survive. For example, I love the 2-page spread that illustrates the various depths to which tree roots grow.  I also found the illustrations showing the underground barrows for various animals fascinating. Here too, human activity is covered including transportation, mining, how we move water, sewage and other utilities, archaeology and paleontology digs. Then last part of this section has the cool geological features such as caves, volcanoes and the earth's structure.

There is a lot of information to be found in this book. The bite sized pieces of information make it highly accessible and easy for browsing. The format is very appealing and will work for more than one student viewing at a time.

Highly recommended.

Perfectly illustrated information

Animals by the Numbers: a book of animal infographics by Steve Jenkins is well worth picking up for teaching both science and math for grades 2-7.

As is Steve Jenkins’ typical MO (and stated in the title) this book is all about the animal world that he finds fascinating, giving us tons of statistical information as infographics. I keep waiting to have that ‘been there, done that’ feeling when Jenkins comes out with a new book but it's yet to come. He continues to find fresh ways to introduce us to the endlessly fascinating natural world.

And what’s not to be enthralled by?

Whether he’s looking at the big picture (invertebrates vs vertebrates or the number of species such as 5,500 mammals vs 1 million species of insects) or the finer details (size, speed, life spans, heartbeats, tongue size, amount of sleep) he presents the numbers in captivating graphs and charts.  And when you’re a math-a-phob like me, that says a lot.

Steve Jenkins has an amazing ability to capture and hold the interest of his readers by looking at ranges of animals, comparing and contrasting characteristics and behaviours that illustrate just how nuanced, varied and adaptive the animal kingdom is. Comparing humans in some cases certainly may put us in our place. Compare the biomass of all the humans in the world, 350 million tons to that of all insects, 100 billion tons and you can see what I mean.

The illustrations are composed of paper cut outs and paired with various types of pie, flow and bar charts, histograms, pictograms and graphs. These representations are clear and easy to understand.  He finds ways to make each topic relatable to basic knowledge levels. For instance when comparing the loudness level between species he includes noises produced by humans too such as those from lawn mowers, chainsaws, firetrucks or jet planes. Did you know that a cicada  produces the same level as noise as a firetruck? Or, that a bulldog bat makes a sound that falls in the same range as a jet plane?

I highly recommend this addition to Steve Jenkins' body of work for any classroom.  Those interested in animals and nature will be captivated

Infographics - part 2

Prior to the holiday break I looked at a couple of books from a series that used infographics to convey information about specific topics.  That series was The World in Infographics.

In this post I'm looking at another series, SuperScience Infographics published by Lerner Publications Company.

I looked at three titles:

Life science through infographics by Nadia Higgins

 Weather and climate through infographics by Rebecca Rowell and

Forces and motion through infographics by Rebecca Rowell.

These are more specific in their scope than The World in Infographics.  With that in mind, each set of double pages focuses on a single aspect of a topic. For example in the book about weather and climate, there are pages that focus on the sun, the seasons, temperature, atmosphere, precipitation, wind, ocean currents and more.  Forces and motion covers topics such as speed, different types of forces, motion (of course), gravity, simple machines and buoyancy.  Life science includes evolution and fossil evidence, habitats, DNA, cells, life cycles, and extinction.

All the books provide interesting information.  The graphics are clear and well done, but on occasion, I thought that some of these seemed to be more like illustrations than an infographic representation.  SuperScience Infographics also includes a glossary, an index and a list of resources (both online and print) for further reading.

Both series are like factoid books in the end, due to the vastness of the topics that they cover.  They make good introductory resources for their intended audiences (grades 4-7 and striving readers).  Overall, I like the first series The World in Infographics more, but I would use and will recommend both series. 

A picture is worth…

Infographic:

Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledgeintended to present complex information quickly and clearly. They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system’s ability to see patterns and trends.  – from Wikipedia 

 Have you ever noticed that once something catches your attention you begin to see it everywhere?  And then you start thinking, how long has this really been around and why didn’t I notice it sooner?

Infographics have been like that for me.

It started with How to Land a Jumbo Jet: a visual exploration oftravel facts, figures and ephemera edited by Nigel Holmes.  I blogged  about it in June, I liked it so much.

Then later in the summer I latched onto these new-fangled looking posters from Pop Chart Lab.  They seemed pretty cool, about some interesting or unusual topics or depicted information in a new way.  I ended up buying some of these posters for the Doucette Library’s collection.  I love the one that shows the ingredients of pies displayed as pie-charts.  I can’t say, however, that I’m really all that fascinated in analyzing the names of rappers but the fact that there is a poster that does just that really excites me.  I know there are people (aka students) out there who will love it.

And so it goes.  Here and there, ‘infographics’ keep popping up in all sorts of places.

Most recently, I’ve brought in a few books from a couple of series where the whole book is done as an infographic about specific topics.  Here are the first two:

The Human World: the world in infographics  and Planet Earth: the world in infographics both written by Jon Richards and Ed Simkins are like other information books that present a lot of interesting facts about people and how we live and the Earth and its natural phenomena

The Human World covers everything from the number of people on the planet, where we live, the haves and have-nots, resource usage including water, creation of waste, communication, travel and transportation. The data is presented in a way that allows us to see a visual representation that allows easier comprehension of bigger ideas by comparing and showing relative size of differences.  For example, in the “Dwindling Resources” section 6 barrels of oil that represent 6 countries and how much oil they use.  No surprise, the US consumes the most oil on a daily basis (19,150,000 barrels per day) and gets the biggest picture of an oil barrel.  Next comes, China (9,189,000 bpd), Japan (4,452,000 bpd), India (3,182,000 bdp), Russia (2,937,000 bpd) and last, Island of Niue (40 – yes, forty!, bpd).  This last one, the barrel is so tiny I didn’t even see it the first time I read it.

In Planet Earth we see how the earth is composed of layers of varying depths and temperatures, moving tectonic plates, earthquakes, mountains, volcanoes, oceans and rivers, the rock cycle, the water cycle, which all create and sustain the environment that exists on earth.  Again, lots of numbers are used to help us understand the relative size and differences. Let’s say land versus water.  71% of the earth is water. 29% is land.  Of that 29% land mass, 31% is desert, 33% is grassland and 36% is forest. A pyramid shows how wet or dry and cold or hot each habitat is in relation to each other.  Deserts are hot and dry whereas tropical forests are hot and wet.  Higher up the pyramid, a coniferous forest (subarctic) will be much cooler and neither overly wet or dry.  (The picture works way better with way fewer words.)

These books include glossaries, indexes and web resources to follow up both the statistics about these subjects as well as the infographics.

Overall, I liked both of these books.  They are factoid books at heart but allow us to develop a deeper understanding through the graphics showing comparisons and relations between similar elements.  Bringing these into the classroom allows for cross-disciplinary potential.  Use for math and science or math and social studies with some graphic art thrown in for good measure. Striving readers who struggles with dense text will find these less daunting to read.

I would recommend these for grades 4 to 7.