Light Is All Around Us: An Engaging Visual STEM Book About the Sun and Shadows for Kids (Ages 4-8) (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2) - Hardcover

Pfeffer, Wendy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060291214 ISBN 13: 9780060291211

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2014

Synopsis

Read and find out about light in this colorfully illustrated
nonfiction picture book.

Light is all around you! It comes in many forms: Light from the
sun brightens our day, firelight flickers in the night, electric lights fill
our homes—and some animals even make the sea glow.

With lively illustrations and diagrams and clear, engaging text,
this Level 2 Let's-Read-and-Find-Out picture book is an engaging look into the
many ways that light brightens our world.

Now rebranded with a new cover look, this book features rich
vocabulary and uses simple, fun diagrams to clearly explain concepts like light
speed. This book also includes a find out more section with activities that
show why plants need light to grow and why our shadows look different
throughout the day.

This is a clear and appealing science book for early elementary
age kids, both at home and in the classroom. Both text and artwork were vetted
for accuracy by Russell P. Leslie, Professor and Associate Director of the
Lighting Research Center at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

This is a Level 2 Let's-Read-and-Find-Out, which means the book
explores more challenging concepts for children in the primary grades. The 100+
titles in this leading nonfiction series are:

• hands-on
  and visual


• acclaimed
  and trusted


• great
  for classrooms

Top 10 reasons to love LRFOs:

• Entertain
  and educate at the same time


• Have
  appealing, child-centered topics


• Developmentally
  appropriate for emerging readers


• Focused;
  answering questions instead of using survey approach


• Employ
  engaging picture book quality illustrations


• Use
  simple charts and graphics to improve visual literacy skills


• Feature
  hands-on activities to engage young scientists


• Meet
  national science education standards


• Written/illustrated
  by award-winning authors/illustrators & vetted by an expert in the
  field


• Over
  130 titles in print, meeting a wide range of kids' scientific interests

Books in this series support the Common Core Learning Standards,
Next Generation Science Standards, and the Science, Technology, Engineering,
and Math (STEM) standards. Let's-Read-and-Find-Out is the winner of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books &
Films Prize for Outstanding Science Series.

About this title

About the Authors

Wendy Pfeffer enjoyed early careers as a teacher and a nursery school director. She now devotes her time to writing and conducting workshops on creative writing for both adults and children. She is the author of the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science book Sounds All Around as well as The Gooney War and Popcorn Park Zoo. Ms. Pfeffer lives in Pennington, New Jersey.

Paul Meisel has illustrated many books for children, including Why Are the Ice Caps Melting?, Energy Makes Things Happen, and What Happens to Our Trash? in the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science series. He lives in Newtown, Connecticut.

From the Back Cover

Just stop and take a look—light is all around you!

Light from the sun brightens the day, firelight flickers in the night, and electric light fills our homes. Do you know the speed of light or how to measure its brightness? And how does light help you see? Read and find out about the many ways that light brightens our world!

From the Inside Flap

Just stop and take a look--light is all around you!

Light from the sun brightens the day, firelight flickers in the night, and electric light fills our homes. Do you know the speed of light or how to measure its brightness? And how does light help you see? Read and find out about the many ways that light brightens our world!

--Booklist

Reviews

K-Gr 2—Light is not an easy concept to convey on a beginning-to-read level, but Pfeffer does a credible job of incorporating just the right amount of detail for these readers. She relates the science concepts she's introducing to scenarios that are in the everyday experience of young children; for example, when explaining lumens, or the units used to quantify brightness, she first discusses how temperature and length are measured. Readers will also enjoy the two easy experiments appended at the end. The colorful illustrations, created with pen and ink, watercolor, liquid acrylic, pencils, and pastels and which include children of diverse races, extend the text well and are marked by several appealing details, such as costumed children carrying glow sticks at Halloween and a glowing octopus. Another book in this series, Franklyn M. Branley's Day Light, Night Light: Where Light Comes From (HarperCollins, 1998), presents the concept of reflective light even more clearly than this title, but Pfeffer's text is shorter and features much more white space on each page, making it especially attractive for beginning readers.—Maralita L. Freeny, District of Columbia Public Library

A companion book to Pfeffer’s Sounds All Around (1999), this simply written volume introduces the properties of light, particularly sunlight. Meisel’s amiable ink drawings, brightened with colorful washes, help make the concepts accessible to a young audience. Topics range from the simple, such as examples of bioluminescence, to the complex, like how light waves bouncing off objects are perceived by the eye and the brain as vision (a process introduced here but not fully explained). After discussing the sun’s light as “waves of electromagnetic radiation, a kind of energy that travels through space,” the text compares the speed of light to that of cars, planes, and sound waves, while a double-page illustration makes the comparisons more real. An appended hands-on section presents two simple science experiments and an activity related to shadows. An attractive addition to the dependable Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science series. Preschool-Grade 2. --Carolyn Phelan

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060291214
• ISBN 13: 9780060291211
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Meisel Paul
• Number of pages: 40