Senor Parrot's Perch

Does anyone ever outgrow Legos? Here’s a great stop motion film made with Legos:

Building the LEGO Millennium Falcon from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

I found this on Geekadelphia. I showed it to my kids and they got excited about how much fun it would be to make stop-action films for themselves. The oldest has her own digital camera and we have a tripod laying around. She’s got her own computer, so why not?

So how do I go about doing this? I did a quick search and it turns out there’s lots of sites on the internet to help us get started. So, more fun.

Say, isn’t this how Phil Vischer, of Veggie Tales fame got started? If I remember right, he and his buddies would make films and animated special effects in their basements.  I’ll have to go back to his autobiography, Me, Myself, and Bob: A True Story About Dreams, God, and Talking Vegetables, to make sure.

The exitement builds!

Boy, Were We Wrong About the Solar System, written by Kathleen V. Kudlinski and illustrated by John Rocco is a very fun and instructive history of scientific thinking about our solar system. Its my most recent stop to understanding the universe.

Beginning with the belief that the Earth was the center of the solar system and continuing through current scientific theories and activities, this book follows a predictable pattern:

• This is what we thought;
• Boy were we wrong!
• This is what we’re thinking now.

What I like about this book is how it presents scientific deduction from observations and evidence, testing what we think by seeing how well it aligns with what we see. For example, the ancient Greeks determined that the Earth was round because the shadow it cast upon the moon was round. Comets streaking through the sky didn’t crack the heavenly spheres of crystal, so perhaps the Earth and the planets were drifting through space. The appearance of new stars meant that the heavens were not unchanging.

Changing our ideas based upon data and testing ideas against data is the underpinning of science. This book emphasizes that. However, it is short on how these scientific principals translated into mathematical concepts that provided data of their own. Mathematical models, be it geometrical descriptions of the orbits of the planets, or the equations of gravity are fundamental to our understanding of the universe.

The models of the universe created by Copernicus and Kepler predicted the planets’ movements much better than the old theory. That is why we accepted their ideas and rejected the others. Isaac Newton’s Theory of Gravity improved these explanations more by helping to explain variations in the planets orbits when they were near each other, even leading to the hypothesis that there was another planet beyond Saturn. Ah, Math! the language of science.

Author Kathleen V. Kudlinski has also written Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs!

Book: Boy, Were We Wrong About the Solar System

Author: Kathleen V. Kudlinski

Illustrator: John Rocco

ISBN: 978-0-525-46979-7

Everybody knows that a dog is man’s best friend. How about his or her best audience? Dogs are now being used as ‘nonjudgemental’ audiences for children learning to read. Found in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, we read that young children are reading to dogs in order to build up their literacy, i.e. reading, skills.

The friendly beasts known as “Reading Education Assistance Dogs”, sit quietly,  wag their tails approvingly, and drool, while your kid gets to forge all the way through a book, maybe for the first time.

Yet again, dogs step in where nature or a parent is lacking, and provide a friendly, keen, ear, a lick and a snuggle. Better by far than nothing, but wouldn’t a parent be a grand improvement. Parents should listen as well as read aloud.

Siblings, especially younger ones, love to be read to. If your budding reader has any, the younger siblings are also better than dogs, and the time together forms lifelong bonds, and sparks a conversation, not just barks.

Seems that this approach is nothing new, as this older article from the NY Times indicates. That mysterious bond between man and dog will never be plumbed to it’s full depths, it seems.

Stolen from the New York Times

The French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, whose work reflects a seemingly insatiable restlessness and sense of wonder about other places and other cultures, won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday. In its citation, the Swedish Academy praised Mr. Le Clézio, 68, as the “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.”

Mr. Le Clézio’s work defies easy characterization, but in more than 40 essays, novels and children’s books, he has written of exile and self-discovery, of cultural dislocation and globalization, of the clash between modern civilization and traditional cultures. Having lived and taught in many parts of the world, he writes as fluently about North African immigrants in France, native Indians in Mexico and islanders in the Indian Ocean as he does about his own past.

Well, seems, from his description, that he fits the non-insular type that the Nobel Prize Selection Committee was looking for this year. Sniping at the committee aside, there are a couple of lovely snippets of his work translated provided by the New York Times, as well. Unfortunately for us Americans who can only read English or German, a search of Amazon turns up little in translation.  I’m left with the impression that it would be a great pleasure to read more of his work. Alas, it’s not just Americans who don’t translate much.

If your kids like the Lego or Playmobil castles, or any of the other building toys,  Castle Under Siege! by Andrew Solway is a little book that offers a fun hook into some the science behind those ancient buildings. Already engrossed in the imaginary building of a castle and defending it against all enemies, kids are primed to learn how it was really done. Books like this are great segues into learning more on their own.

I found this book in the library by chance, while looking for books about robots to share with my kids. I grabbed it, realizing that these simple applications might help my kids see just why science is cool. It also provides a nice window into the past. Its aimed at 2nd through 4th graders, though some older kids might enjoy the quick informative read, especially coupled with David Macaulay’s great Castle, which is aimed at higher age level than Castle Under Siege!

Medieval society seems like all labor, but there were lots of machines at work to create and maintain their way of life. Castle Under Siege! looks at a few of these, like the drawbridge, crossbow, catapults, and siege engines were actually applications of simple machines. Photographic reenactments and illustrations help explain the concepts.

Simple machines are also so simple, that a trip to the hardware, home improvement, or hobby store to pick up a couple pulleys, boards, dowels and wooden wheels can result in some quick construction of the same machines on a tabletop scale.

Anyone with kids knows how much they want a pet of their own. And, anyone who was a kid remembers wanting and hoping for a pet of their own. There’s a magic that exists between a child and his pet that adults never have with their own pets. Much of that magic is in the mind of the child, but mostly it seems to be a bonding of peers, becoming close and best friends.

But when the child is very young, they don’t understand their pets and often are unwittingly harmful to them. Its hard to teach them ahead of time. We catch them picking up the cat by the hind leg and getting scratched, or scrunching the dog’s ear and getting bitten.

Children need to learn how to live with their pet, and that’s where Tails Are Not For Pulling comes in handy. Simply and clearly written by Elizabeth Verdick and perfectly illustrated by Marieka Heinlen, it is a great, fun read for young children already have or will be getting a pet soon.

It starts with the simple, fun, question for your child, “If pets could talk, what do you think they’d say?” Then it delivers the answers, teaching your child to think about what his or her pet is saying with their posture, actions, and noises.

Like most of the other books I write about, I’ve tested, this one on #2 the five year old, still young enough to misunderstand what Sherlock the cat is telling her, and not yet realizing how she might be hurting him. It was a real eye opener for her. The lessons are so simply presented. The illustrations are so appropriate. The message really took hold. It’s an excellent pick for a young child who will be receiving a new pet in the house.

Tails Are Not For Pulling is part of a series from Free Spirit Publishing for teaching behavior to young children written and illustrated by this same duo.

Coffee adds zing, even to good books. From Snatched, by Pete Hautman and Mary Logue:

Brian took another gulp of coffee. The top of his head was vibrating. He could grow to like the stuff.

That was certainly my own reaction when I started drinking that bitter elixir.

Just over a week ago I was with the family at the bookstore. The kids were looking at books that interested them and I was browsing in the kid’s poetry section. There I found John Updike’s A Child’s Calendar, and perfectly illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. Until then I hadn’t any idea that John Updike had written anything for children. I opened it and began reading, and after half-way through the first poem decided I had to have this book. You should have it, too.

The poems are simple rhymes perfectly suited for children, one for every month. Each captures the essence of that month in the way a child sees it, experiences it, and remembers it. Each poem in turn develops and carries forward the rhythm of the year as it opens and closes and opens again. And each awakens in you your own memories. (more…)

Lured into a nearby woods, which he’s somehow never noticed before, by a gently urging breeze, Simon Bloom finds himself the keeper of the Teacher’s Edition of a Physics text book. Suddenly appearing above him, it klonks him on the head. Inside, Simon finds the formulas that allow him to manipulate the laws of physics.

Someone else wants that book, though, and that mysteriously cloaked person won’t let anything get in the way of getting that book! Simon, and his two friends Owen and Alyssa team up, learn their physics and face their enemy.

Simon Bloom is a great introduction to the science fiction genre. Aimed at the middle school aged children, it introduces the possibilities of manipulating the laws of science in a fast-paced and entertaining romp through the world of 11 and 12 year-olds in a mixture of science fiction and fantasy. Unlike the vast majority of fantasy, however, this book’s plot turns on the laws of physics, like gravity, velocity, and electronic charges, and how gaining an understanding of and manipulating these laws is both satisfying and empowering.

This is an excellent first novel for Michael Reisman. Its a smart book full of action and adventure, cleverly laid out and developed. It clearly is meant to have sequels, but this book is completely self-contained, with a satisfying ending that ties together all the loose ends. Nevertheless, Reisman pulls loose some of the strands before the last page and has me anxiously looking forward to the sequel.

Universal studios has purchased the rights to the movie for this. That’s good news.

Reisman’s Myspace page

Book Info: (I read the Advanced Reader’s Copy, possibly a smidge differerent than the official version here)

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Juvenile (February 14, 2008)
• ISBN-13: 978-0525479222

Wow, I’m not waiting for this one. Seems Danielle Steel, author of best selling, steamy, adult fare, is entering the kid’s book market with The Happiest Hippo in the World about a hippo born, not gray, but green. It’s expected to be published in the later part of next year by HarperCollins Children’s.

Nothing in the story about what the message might be. Hmm… born green instead of gray. It wouldn’t be about trying to fit in when we’re born with differences, but resolving to accept ourselves the way we are and just be happy about it. Naw, that’s been done before, at least once.

Maybe this green hippo has super magical powers that explain the why of being green and that enable, no, obligate, this hippo to save the world… naw, not from Steel.

The story is at theBookseller.com.