Pluto's Secret by Margaret A. Weitekamp with David DeVorkin

Pluto's Secret: An Icy World's Tale of Discovery by Margaret A. Weitekamp with David DeVorkin

Rating: 5 stars

Yesterday, on the way to the pool, Lorelei read Pluto's Secret.  When we got there, it was break time, so I asked her what she thought of it.  I interrupted her reading of a different book with my question.  Like me, she's not so fond of having her reading interrupted.

"It's nonfiction.  And it's funny nonfiction.  You don't see a lot of that.  Usually nonfiction is so serious.  But if you're so curious about it, why don't you read it?" was her full answer.

I told her the last part was a bit rude but she did have a point.  I shuffled to the car, got the book, and sat down to read it.  I interrupted her one last time before I really began to read: "Do you think someone is going to laugh at me, an adult reading a big picture book, without a kid on my lap?" My remark got no response.

But I kid you not: 30 seconds later a lady walked by and laughed out loud. And not in a very nice way.  I turned and looked at her and she apologized, "Sorry! I couldn't help it!  You just don't see that every day!"

I smiled, held back the long explanation, and went back to my book.

The icy world...was busy dancing with its moons.

I'm sure you heard, as even stuck-in-my-own-world-me heard, that Pluto is no longer a planet.  When my kids read an older science book, I am the one to break it to them or remind them that Pluto is no longer a planet.  This book provides a longer and better explanation than this mom usually provides.

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has helped out parents and teachers with this book.  And it is a great book not just for learning Pluto's story (Pluto interjects many parts of it himself in a very fun way) but also to inform kids of how discoveries are made, and how older "facts" need to be reexamined with a fresh eye and a curious mind.

Here are the facts, in case you have to do some explaining before you check out this book (which you really should if you hang around any kid older than five):

• Pluto was declared a planet on 13 March 1930 after the small dot Clyde Tombaugh, through his telescopic camera, moved in the two pictures a few days apart.  This was what planets do: move.  Ergo, that dot must be a planet.
• Eleven-year-old Venetia Burney from England suggested the name "Pluto" because "Pluto is the Roman god of the dark underworld.  The new little planet is so far from the sun that it must be a cold, dark place, too."
• Astronomers soon learned that Pluto didn't always stay in its place.  In fact, it orbited waaaay out past the other planets in the solar system, with other small planet-like things, and in a different path than the other planets.
• This new area where planets--or, maybe they weren't planets--orbited was named the Kuiper belt.
• There was no clear definition of what a planet was, so astronomers voted on a definition: they must orbit the sun, must be round like a ball, and it has to be alone in its orbit. (As the daughter of a guy who was constantly saying "Well, it depends on how you define X," I like that the authors included this in the book. Because you can bet I encourage my kids to define things, too.)
• Therefore, Pluto was recategorized as an icy world--a "something new"--and we have a whole lot more to learn about it.

This book pairs nicely with a field trip to the Air and Space Museum--either downtown D.C. or the one out by us, Udvar Hazy Center.  That's where we're off to tomorrow...


Suggested reading:
A Penguin Story for a simple tale of curiosity, one of Kiefer's favorites (ages 2-5)...
Clouds and other easy reader books in that series for simple explanations of weather (ages 3-6)...
Meet Einstein for simple introduction of Einstein and his major discoveries (ages 4-7)

Toilet: How it Works by David Macaulay

Toilet: How it Works by David Macaulay

Rating: 5 stars

Yes, that's right.  A book about toilets.  Random, right?  But more than so many other books, I think this one does what children's books ought to do: take the ordinary and make it extraordinarily fascinating!

The book and toilets really are fascinating--and fantastic.

We all have toilets.  We know how they are used.  But how do they work? Macaulay invites us to be curious about something we (hopefully) see and use a few times a day.  And then, he dives in to answer that question with the illustrative details that he's know for.

After humorously pointing out what a toilet is for--a dog watering bowl, a goldfish burial site, a spring garden (when the toilet is being recycled for a new use)--he gets down to the nitty gritty: they're for removing the waste our bodies make.  He spends a useful two-page spread (again, with humor) showing how waste is formed inside our bodies, and then--turn the page--he gets into the toilet mechanism that we all use to flush.

(I might or might not have referred to this page to figure out what was wrong with our toilet a month ago…)

Macaulay illustrates how, when the stopper goes up, the water goes out and forces the water (and waste) that you see in the bowl to leave the bowl and go up the pile.  Once it spills down to the other side of the steep pipe, gravity takes over and the weight of the air (kids thought that was cool) pushes that stuff down the pipe.

Bye, bye bone...

From there it could go to one of two places.  For us non-city folks, it goes to a septic tank.  Lorelei and Ben have known that we have a septic tank, and I've done a C+ job of explaining it to them, I think.  Thankfully, Macaulay picks up where I left off; he illustrates the answer to show that every time the wastewater flows down into the septic tank, it pushes up the water level.  As that water leaves the tank, nutrients in the water help the grass to be a little happier, a little richer.

For city folks, the wastewater gets pushed through pipes buried deep under the city streets, pipes that go to wastewater treatment plants.  He illustrates the process of filtering the waste through many different tanks, each one aimed to get the water that much cleaner.  Around and around it gets cycled, so it gets cleaner and cleaner.

Lorelei and Ben wanted to know why--why spend all this time getting the wastewater clean?  Macaulay answers, again with a heavy dose of humor:

Finally, the water is clean enough to join the river.
Some of the clean water will evaporate and form clouds.
Some of these clouds will produce rain.
Some of the rain will end up in reservoirs as drinking water. 

Now you know why we go to all the trouble!

Yes, please--clean water falling down on me as rain (rather than poopy water)!

This book, and the others that Macaulay has written for kids of this age group and reading level (including Jet Plane, Castle, and maybe more) are gifts of books that show the mechanics of ordinary things.  Okay, well maybe castles are ordinary to you.  Not quite to us.  Much to Lorelei's dismay…

This book is fun and great and informative.  What's not to love?  Oops, gotta go use one...

Alex the Parrot: No Ordinary Bird by Stephanie Spinner

Alex the Parrot: No Ordinary Bird by Stephanie Spinner, illustrated by Meilo So

Rating: 5 stars

This is a great, great, GREAT nonfiction book about Irene Pepperberg, a female scientist who a leading thinker on animal intelligence.  Here's the review I wrote up for Washington Family Magazine:

Without a doubt, this is one of the best nonfiction children's books I've ever read--and, with two big readers and one children's book blog, I read heaps of children's books.  So that's sayin' somethin'.

Let me tell you about the book, and then I'll tell you why you should buy it for your child or classroom, and make it your gift of choice for any 5- or 6-year old's birthday.

Here's the real Alex, working his magic

Stephanie Spinner simply tells the story of the unique friendship of Irene Pepperberg, a graduate student of biology at Purdue University, and Alex (short for Avian Learning Experiment), the African grey parrot she purchased and studied.  Their relationship began in 1977 when most people thought animals weren't very smart--especially animals with small brains, like birds.  Irene soon taught Alex the names and shapes and how to count; Alex picked up how to say his favorite words on his own.

Over the years, Irene wrote about Alex and all of the things that he could do, but it wasn't until Alex was on TV that he started to get noticed.  His personality helped--he would bob his head and sway to the music, he would stick his head in a mug and make silly noises and he'd stretch out his neck and say, "You tickle!" when he wanted to be tickled.  "Alex liked being tickled so much that his face would turn pink with pleasure."  (How cute is that?!)

To read the rest of the review, please click here.

Clouds by Marion Dane Bauer

Clouds by Marion Dane Bauer, illustrated by John Wallace

Rating: 4 stars

My young Mr. Question (that's Ben, nearly 5) loves to ask about clouds.  This simple, straightforward Ready-to-Read book is definitely made for Ben.  He can almost read the whole book himself!  Not that that means I can prop my feet up on my table and let him answer his own questions from now on...  I hope he always comes to me with questions.

But questions of the cloud variety?  I'll let nonfiction children's book author-guru Marion Dane Bauer handle it.  She explains the three most common types of clouds--cirrus, stratus, cumulus--and defines them in graspable terms.  Then she tells young readers how clouds help us: they shade us from the sun and wrap the Earth at night to keep us warm.  (Last night when we were reading this book I asked Kiefer if he wanted a cloud blanket to keep him warm.  Everyone, including myself, got a kick out of that.  He said no.)

Everyday science, that's what this book teaches.  I love it.

(A while ago we checked out and read together Tomie De Paola's The Cloud Book, a wordy, informative book about the ten most common forms of clouds.  De Paola includes information on how to predict weather with clouds and also myths about clouds.  We'll have to take another look at it because the kids weren't ready for it then (whenever "then" was), but Lorelei especially might be ready for it now.)

Parents and teachers should know about Marion Dane Bauer!  I have reviewed her Grand Canyon book, just one in a series of Wonders of America Ready-to-Read books.  She has four weather books and two natural disaster books in the Ready-to-Read category, and also five "my first biographies."  (We have Benjamin Franklin on our shelf at home--so Ben can learn about Ben.)   For all (children's) nonfiction stuff, click here.  Or you can go to her website and click around yourself.

On A Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein by Jennifer Berne

On A Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein by Jennifer Berne, illustrated by Vladimir Radunsky

Rating: 4.5 stars

"I have no special talents.  I am only passionately curious," said Albert Einstein.

I love this quotation because it makes you think that everything about Einstein is approachable.  Right!  He was only passionately curious!  If I, too, was passionately curious, then I, too, could discover such wonders as he did.

Riiiight.

But I'll keep my skepticism to myself, especially while reading this book with my kids.  I love taking the opportunity to teach them about a fantastically famous person through a well-written children's book, and On A Beam of Light is that opportunity.

Berne starts with autobiographical tidbits--Einstein was a late talker and a quiet wonderer when he did start talking.  He was insanely curious, constantly asking questions about how things worked.

(This part is perfect for my Ben, whose nickname is Mr. Question.  I've never added up the questions he's asked in an hour, a day, or a week but...he never really stops.  Sometimes I do need a break, so I sing him my goofy Mr. Question song that I made up especially for him.  It makes him smile and pause for just a few blessed moments--but then he gets right back to it, which of course I want him to do because I want to foster that passionately curious mind of his.  Just with a few breaks every now and then for sanity's sake.)

Albert began to read and study.

Along with asking questions, Einstein began to imagine, read, and study.  About gravity.  Light.  Magnetism.  Sound.  Math.  Big stuff, but kids are less intimidated than these subjects than you'd think. Wonderfully, "can't" isn't yet part of their vocabulary.

I have to admit that my favorite part of the book is when Berne shares that Einstein's favorite place to think was on his little sailboat.  She's quietly encouraging kids to have a favorite place to think--I love that.  And he even chose clothes that he thought would foster great thinking--saggy-baggy sweaters and pants, shoes without socks.  I love that--and love that maybe one day this school year my kids will get dressed in some (assuredly random) outfit that will foster creativity of one kind or another.

The back two pages are filled with more facts about Einstein--about his discoveries, experiments, personality, and of course some other books through which you can find out more information about him.

I plan on checking this book out every few months, just to keep providing inspiration into my kids' minds.  And then I'll remember to open (or close!) the door and step away so to provide the opportunity to be creative in their own way.

Meet Einstein by Mariela Kleiner

Meet Einstein by Mariela Kleiner, illustrated by Viviana Garofoli

Rating: 5 stars

I recently read that almost every single Kindergardener will raise her hand when asked, "Who is an artist?"  Yet by fourth grade, only a few hands go up when the same question is asked.  Clearly something gets in the way of creativity between those years--thanks to a bit of insecurity, a sprinkling of poor peer review, and a heavy dose of knowing what a Real Artist is and does and makes.  Kids get intimidated out of being an artist when, at their core, they still are.

Same thing with science.

I've yet to meet a kid--and with three kids, I've met a whole lot of 'em--who isn't curious.  A kid who doesn't look up and down and all around and just...wonder.  Ben is my thinker-outloud-er and he lets me know of all his wonderful wonderings.  Constantly.  An afternoon with him surely includes approximately 3,852,992* questions and half that many observations.  While it definitely infuriates my grown-up self that he often doesn't care about the answer to most of these questions (that I so dutifully and thoroughly think up!), it's his curiosity that I appreciate, that I really try my utmost to encourage.

This book helps with both of the things I've pointed out.

The book offers two simple explanations of what scientists DO: "Scientists like to ask lots of questions" and "Scientists make lots of discoveries."  No intimidating, exclusive definitions here.  While reading this book, Ben and Lorelei suddenly realized that they WERE SCIENTISTS!  Holy smokes!  They, too, like to ask lots of questions and they, too, make lots of discoveries.  POOF!  Scientists!  No expensive, time-consuming PhDs necessary.

With the help of a very simple introduction to Albert Einstein and what his major contributions were--his many discoveries of light and his insights about gravity--my kids realized that science is a natural thing that they do every day.  It is a natural extension of their own way of thinking about and exploring  the world around them.  Garofoli's simple and welcoming illustrations just add to the feeling that OF COURSE kids are all scientists.  Now my kids are armed with this confidence as they explore our woods, splash around our creek, figure out cause and effect, and make preschooler-sized predictions about their world.  (As I edit this, they are watching what happens when you put an ice cube in a cup of warm tea...)

Doctors Lorelei & Ben,
seriously hard at work making slime

Now, if only I could help them feel this confident in their scientific capabilities in middle school and beyond...  At the very least, I'm laying the groundwork for it.

Earlier in the year, my sister planned a science-themed birthday party for her twin girls who turned 6.  (Ever the entertainer, my sister has yet to plan and throw an unsuccessful, unfun party!)  Her husband was the crazy scientist, complete with a few chuckle-worthy mistakes in the experiments he was leading.  But the kids, dressed in plain white t-shirts cut open to be lab coats, each with their own personalized "doctor" name tag and safety goggles, hung on his every word.  They did a few kitchen science experiments; they giggled in awe as their volcano overflowed, the stuff floated in the fizzy water, and the made gooey slime to gross out their parents.

Doesn't it make you want to be a kid again?

(And isn't that what parenting is all about?  Your own personal do-over, re-appreciating it the second time around...)

* My Dad, when he read this, asked how I got this precise number of questions.  "One day, I counted," I retorted.  Ha!

Wonder Horse by Emily Arnold McCully

 Wonder Horse: The True Story of the World's Smartest Horse by Emily Arnold McCully

Rating: 4 stars

I recently reviewed a really wonderful book for a local magazine.  Alex the Parrot: No Ordinary Bird was a book that landed in my lap but really opened my eyes to a bunch of great nonfiction books on animal intelligence that are fantastic for young, advanced readers.  Lorelei is reading chapter books, and she's worked her way through The Magic Treehouse, Cam Jansen, and Magic Schoolbus series.  But she's just 5 1/2, so I'm careful about the content of the books she reads.  And she still loves picture books, so I'm happy to keep supplying them to her.  Therefore, I was delighted to find a handful of books that were long and challenging and interesting...picture books.  And nonfiction!  Even better.

"I wonder what else you can learn," Doc said.

Wonder Horse is a long book about the true story of a horse owned by Bill Key, nicknamed "Doc."  Doc was born a slave but freed as an adult, and his natural way with animals remained with him.  He made a fortune selling Keystone Liniment for humans and animals, and spent some of that fortune on an Arabian mare.  He bred the extraordinary mare, who bore an ordinary colt named Jim.  Jim looked ordinary, but within months of his birth Doc realized he was incredibly smart.  He taught him all sorts of things--the alphabet, simple math, colors, shapes.  He quieted naysayers by having experts quiz Jim without Doc to help him out, and the two of them toured the country to show off and help promote kindness towards animals.

Of the books we've found and read on animal intelligence, Lorelei and Ben liked this one the best.  (Alex the Parrot gets my vote.)  Maybe they are just being nice, as they know that horses are my favorite animal...  Regardless, I love how interested they are at the fairly wild notion that animals have significant brain power like we do.  I appreciate how this book introduces scientific methods, but I like even more that their perspectives have been rocked a little, that their assumptions have been challenged a little.

The Stinky Giant by Ellen Weiss

The Stinky Giant by Ellen Weiss, illustrated by Mel Friedman

Rating: 4.5 stars

Here's a random book for you...  I'm not even sure how it ended up in our library bag (in other words, Ben definitely snuck it in there, as he takes his book hunting skills very seriously).

But it's perfect for both kids.  Lorelei, and therefore Ben, is very much into riddles.  We've played guessing games (for example: "Guess what fruit I'm about to give you.  It's green on the outside and red on this inside....  Right!  A watermelon!") for a long time, so riddles fit right in within our conversations.  Ben, and therefore Lorelei, is very much into anything stinky and gross.  So...The Stinky Giant that hands out a riddle to two kids he might eat?  Count us in!

I didn't expect to like this book so much, but I do because it involves some thinking and some science.  Two very good things.

Urk the giant lives atop a mountain.  Every time he does his laundry, his dirty water floods two innocent kids below.  When they go to Urk to complain, he challenges them to a contest: He'll give them a riddle.  If they get it right, he'll move away.  If they get it wrong, he'll eat them for dinner.  Yikes.

Here's the riddle: "There is something you see every day, and it is one thing but also three things."

After working together to think of the answer and coming up with many of wrong guesses, the kids realize that the answer is water, as it is liquid, vapor, and ice as well as simply water.  Urk has to move away, and the kids live happily ever after.

I like the book because it fosters the whole riddle/word problem mentality.  We're all about word problems here, though from time to time I do throw up the white flag and say, "Not tonight!" when my brain is too tired to think up word problems for little ones...  Okay, maybe it's my patience that goes first.

Either way, it's a good book to read and a great habit to start.  Here are some word problems that we use, to help get you started (besides that whole fruit riddle listed above):

For Lorelei, 5: You are at a birthday party with four friends--two boys and two girls.  Each girl wants two pieces of cake, and each boy wants one piece.  How many pieces are served?

For Ben, 3 1/2: Lorelei, Ben, and Kiefer are running in a race.  Lorelei finishes the race in 5 minutes.  Ben finishes the race in 10 minutes.  Kiefer finishes the race in 12 minutes.  Who wins the race?

The Grand Canyon by Marion Dane Bauer, illustrated by John Wallace

 The Grand Canyon by Marion Dane Bauer, illustrated by John Wallace

Rating: 3.5 stars

I'm an Army brat.  I grew up all over the place, and am fortunate to not only have seen a bunch of places in our country, but also to have lived there, and gotten to know the place.  There are only four states I've not visited: Alaska, Maine, Rhode Island, and New Mexico.  Any sympathy you might have for me will evaporate when I tell you that my father's overseas tour was in Hawaii.  I spent three years of my life shored up on Oahu, visiting neighbor islands for a few days here and there, hula-ing my way through my middle years.  It was rough...the sunburns and all.

My parents didn't have a ton of money for vacations, and we drove everywhere we needed or wanted to go.  We saw and did a lot, but...we never got to the Grand Canyon.  It is a place that I've always wanted to see, a place I've been curious about and dreamt about for decades.  I have dreams of running it--R2R2R they call it, rim to rim to rim.  I'm a big outdoorsy person and feel more comfortable in running shoes than heels, happier dusty than all dolled up.  And lately I've been really jonesing for a long hike.

Enter a short trip, sans kids, to Vegas.  Not exactly my style, but fun in its own way and a much-needed getaway.  During it, my husband surprised me with a short trip to the Grand Canyon.  I was so surprised and excited!  We took a short ride there and spent an even shorter but very calming 15 minutes in the Canyon.  It was more than I expected and I wanted hours to take in its hues, quiet-ness, and history.  I couldn't, so I had to be grateful for the little visit.  I'd like to go back.  Like, tomorrow.

Me, happy and awestruck, at the Grand Canyon.

Upon return to reality here in Virginia, I was very grateful that Lorelei and Ben and I had read this book together a few months ago.  They knew exactly what I was talking about when I said that we visited the Grand Canyon.  This book is part of a series of books that all kids should read.  They are not phenomenal literary works--the writing is not outstanding, the stories are not witty, the illustrations won't blow you away.  But they teach my kids about our country, and many of the great places that is packed in it.

In this series, there are books about Yellowstone, Niagra Falls, Mount Rushmore, The Statue of Liberty, the Rocky Mountains, the Mississippi.  We've read most of them--I discovered them last summer while preparing our kids to go to Colorado for a heavenly vacation within and around the Rockies.  It's important stuff, this teaching-of-America thing.  Lorelei and Ben and certainly Kiefer are too young to appreciate democracy and free choice and our relative affluence compared to the world...but they are not too young to start locating spots on the map and making lists of places we should visit together.

And they're not too young to appreciate beauty, and the awesomeness of a place like the Grand Canyon.  In fact, it's my own child-like awe of the place that makes me teach them about it.  I hope that when they are in their mid-thirties, they are awestruck by things big and small, too.

Beth's Post: The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle

The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle

Rating: 5 stars

Eric Carle is a master at combining beautiful illustrations with thoughtful stories and subtlety engaging children in life science subjects.


Our copy of The Tiny Seed is worn with years of reading, the binding taped in several spots and a bold, “JULIA” written in the first page to mark that we are never, ever getting rid of this book. My kids loved looking at the pictures and were mesmerized by the story as toddlers, pages were used with tracing paper to copy the trees and flowers, and now that they are great readers they still love picking it up and reading it to me.

A tiny seed, smaller than any of the others blows with the strong Autumn wind and flies by the sun, over icy mountains, the ocean, the desert and drops down to a perfect grassy spot only to narrowly avoid being eaten by a bird. It rests in the soil through the long winter nights, and grows to astounding heights in the spring. In the end, autumn again, it releases its tiny seeds in the wind.

I hope that you will get to experience this beautiful book, but you can’t have our copy, we’re still reading it.

Man on the Moon (A Day in the Life of Bob) by Simon Bartram

Man on the Moon (A Day in the Life of Bob) by Simon Bartram

Rating: 4.5 stars

And now for something completely different...

A Peace Corps pal of mine recommended this book to me.  She said her two boys, who a little older than Lorelei and Ben, love to find the little aliens on each page.  Their funny little alien faces--some with three eyes, some with eyes coming out of their heads, others more human except for their green skin--make this one of the best look-and-finds we've read.

Bob looks for aliens but can't find any...but we do!

And there's a story, too!  Bob is the Man on the Moon, a regular, Earth-living guy whose job it is to fly to the moon every morning (I asked Lorelei this morning while we read this, "Does Daddy take a rocket to work?" she thought that was funny) and clean it up.  It gets dirty from all the tourists from Earth, you know.  The pictures of him vacuuming the moon are pretty funny.  Then he and his two buddies, the Man on Mars and the Man on Saturn, do some funny dances for the tourists that blast by.  He then lectures them about the moon and sells moon souvenirs.  The whole time, little aliens are crawling all over the background.  Bob insists that there are no such thing as aliens, which makes Lorelei and Ben shout out to him, "Bob!  There ARE aliens!  Look!"

VERY cute book, and one that is just different in a great way.

Violet the Pilot by Steve Breen

Violet the Pilot by Steve Breen

Rating: 5 stars

First, I just want to apologize to my neighbor for actually writing about this book. When I told her that I was blogging about books, and trying to shine the spotlight on the Great Ones, she looked at me with slightly wild, very serious eyes. "Don't tell everyone about Violet the Pilot," she said quietly. Now you need to know a few things: First, we live in the woods. There was no one around but our kids to hear her talk...well, maybe a deer or two, or a gang of bluejays. So I thought that was a bit funny. Second, um, not many people are actually reading these words I type, so I think the secret is still pretty much safe.

But don't make it be! Go out and find this book! It is wonderful, especially if you have a little girl in your life! Go get it! Make my neighbor get mad at me--your daughter will thank me!

I just had to get that out.

In all seriousness, this is a Great One. I mean, you know I'm a bit anti-princess and I definitely don't encourage super-duper, over-the-top girly ventures. Steve Breen has come up with the best heroine of them all: a quirky little eight year-old who is a mechanical genius. "By the time she was two, she could fix almost any broken appliance. By four, she could take apart the grandfather clock and completely reassemble it." I am curious how her parents found out that she could fix any broken appliance, and I do wonder how the dexterity of a four year-old would allow her to fix a grandfather clock...but my sarcasm aside, I do know how to suspend my disbelief and it's completely suspended by page 4.

Violet makes flying machines from spare parts she scrapes up from the junkyard next to her family's house. In part because she wants to, finally, be a bit cooler in the eyes of her tormentors at school, she enters a flying contest. She builds her own flying machine--"The Hornet," which does a test flight and everything--and flies off to the show, eager to see what she'll return with...maybe a blue ribbon? Instead of arriving, she flies over a river with in-need-of-rescue boy scouts. She doesn't think twice about whether or not she should help, but her successful rescue attempt makes her miss the air show completely. Her lone friend and dog, Orville, keeps her company as she sits on her bed in disappointment until the entire town comes to her house to reward and award her heroic efforts.

I just love Violet. She's smart and fearless, but also just wants to fit in (like we all do) at school. Breen sneaks in the best detail in one illustration of almost all the books I've read--Orville has a barf bag during the test flight. It makes me smile every time, not that I've pointed it out and therefore taught Lorelei the word "barf." I think that can wait till grade school, unless my husband gets to it before that. (The teaching, I mean, not the barfing.) The contraptions she creates are so unique and pulled together that Lorelei has a great time guessing what each thing is on each flying machine, including the Tub-bubbler, the Bicycopter, the Rocket Can, and Lorelei's favorite, the Wing-a-ma-jig.

A must-read. A must-buy. For every girl you know under the age of 8. Or maybe older!