Tag Vicky Fang

AlphaBot / The Secret Mountain / Albert Puzzles and Colouring

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AlphaBot
Vicky Fang
Walker Books

This interactive, non-fiction book published under Walker Books mitKidsPress imprint is sure to be a winner with children. On the first page comes the invitation: ‘Mix and match the AlphaBot parts! / What kind of robot will you build?’ Subsequent pages are split into three parts with scientific terms in alphabetical order defined on the verso sections and robot related illustrations are on each recto section.

The split pages make the book huge fun allowing the reader to design numerous different robots.. Its sturdy construction with a spiral binding will enable it to stand up to the heavy handling it is sure to get in a classroom or at home, as eager youngsters delightedly flip the sections back and forth, playfully learning a considerable amount while so doing. I met a couple of terms I’d not encountered before.

The Secret Mountain
Kaja Kajfež
Scholastic

This book takes children on a long, long journey from Mount Everest all the way to Iceland. They will travel via Scotland’s Ben Nevis, then in turn the highest peak in the Andes, the Rocky Mountains, the Urals dividing Europe and Asia, Mount Broken in Germany, the Dolomites, the Heavenly Mountains of central Asia’s Tian Shan, California’s Mount Whitney, Mount Fuji and finally as night falls, Iceland’s Kirkjufell mountain.

As the sun rises over the Himalayas youngsters will see in the foreground of the illustration, a young snow leopard and her cubs heading off to hunt for food. Also out hunting is a bear and readers are asked, ‘What might he be searching for?’

In each of the following illustrations, every one of which is bursting with wildlife, there’s a mother animal of some kind and her young. So across the day you’ll also spot golden eagles, llamas, moose, brown bears, lynx

and more; some are foraging, others in flight or perhaps playing.

Each spread has a search and find element, another of the interactive elements of this immersive, creature-filled compilation for adults and children to share. Additional facts about eleven animals – one per stopping place – are provided in the three final spreads.

Albert Puzzles and Colouring
Ian Brown and Eoin Clarke
Graffeg

Albert the Tortoise loves to play games with his garden dwelling pals and now in this book he invites young readers to join him and participate in some playful activities at home. There are pages of silhouettes to identity, mazes to negotiate, a search and find, as well as several spreads to colour, others for playing spot the difference, and young children can hone their fine motor skills with dot to dots (those can be coloured in too).

Best Day Ever / Invent-a-Pet

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Here are a couple of recent titles from Sterling Children’s Books

Best Day Ever
Michael J. Armstrong and Églantine Ceulemans

It’s the last day of summer and William has just one goal on his list left: have the most fun ever, and he has a handy fun-o-meter invention to help in his assessment of attempts.

What he hasn’t bargained for though is the non-stop interruptions by his neighbour Anna, she of the incredible imagination. As he pursues his fun-finding in trampolining, art

and scooting, she subverts his every effort by her messy, noisy creative play that scores high on William’s fun-o-meter, in contrast to his own activities.

Eventually however, the boy realises that perhaps a bit of silly, messy, possibly even dangerous play might be the way to go;

and thus with William way out of his comfort zone, a fantastic day ensues and an unlikely friendship between two contrasting characters is forged. Not to mention that a satisfying green light from a certain fun-o-meter also results.

Debut picture book author, Armstrong’s story is a great reminder of the importance of having permeable constructs, and of accepting and celebrating difference.

In her mixed media art Églantine Ceulemans adroitly shows how Anna’s zany, exuberant world gradually impinges upon the matter-of-fact notions of William. There’s a wealth of amusing details, not least the silent, bit-part playing animals to which William seems completely oblivious.

Invent-a-Pet
Vicky Fang and Tidawan Thaipinnarong

Katie wants a pet, but not anything ordinary like a goldfish: her pet must be something extraordinary.

One day she finds a strange-looking machine in her living room, put there by her mum with a note saying ‘Hope this helps in your quest to find an extraordinary pet!

 

Her first input of a football, a blade of grass and a carrot result in a fluffy green creature– cute, but not what she wants.

Several tries later, she still hasn’t got her desired result, although the house is rather inundated with pets. Time to go back to the drawing board and work out how the machine works, decides Katie.

She selects three new items and starts again. After some time she discovers the correlation between size, colour and the third variable. Is this her eureka moment? Not quite.

With persistence, will Katie succeed in her problem solving task and create the pet of her dreams? Perhaps, but first she has to think of a way to deal with the large number of pets she’s already created …

What a fun way to introduce the process of science problem solving – great for a primary classroom STEM collection. Youngsters will love the pets in Tidawan Thaipinnarong’s comical illustrations and her endpapers are a treat too.