Squirts and Spurts: Science Fun With Water

Explains the physics of water pressure, showing how it makes everyday products such as faucets, spray bottles, and water pistols work.

Reviewed with Vicki Cobb's Bangs and Twangs.

Gr. 3-6. In a lively cartoon format, these volumes introduce young readers to beginning physics through basic explanations and easy experiments. Both titles hook the reader from the start by engaging the body: Bangs invites kids to cluck, smack, kiss, and make other body sounds ("Remember, not all sounds are polite"); Squirts suggests kids explore the many ways to squirt water from the mouth. Brief chapters introducing concepts follows this rowdy fun, with plenty of practical, hands-on activities illustrating sound vibration and travel, pitch, and the physiology of hearing (in Bangs ) and the mechanics behind hydraulics, vacuum pressure, and other modes of moving water, including a make-your-own guide to the "aerosol bubbling foam bomb" (Squirts ). The text succeeds in conveying sophisticated concepts through accessible language, and Steve Haefele's drawings of an exuberant, grinning narrator and her robot sidekick clearly illustrate both the broad, abstract concepts and the concrete activity steps. Good books that will encourage enthusiastic learning. Gillian Engberg
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