In the Children’s Room
Publishers have discovered sneaky ways to teach science and history in their new nonfiction series.
Cartoon-style illustrations are always an attention grabber and Scholastic has taken advantage. There are currently 26 books in their “You Wouldn’t Want To…” series, with more on the way. So far they have covered American History (Civil War soldiers, colonists, pioneers, Apollo 13 space mission, the wild west); sailing on the high seas (the Titanic, the Mayflower, whalers, pirate ships); ancient history (Rome, Egypt, Greece, the Aztecs, Alexander the Great) and more. The texts are brief and fact-filled, but the captions provide those surprising and sometimes gory details that children love to know.
Picture Window Books recently joined the parade with cartoon illustrations for their books, but they are specializing in Greek myths. They currently have books on the Trojan Horse,
Perseus, Jason and the Argonauts, Theseus, Hercules, and Odysseus.
Younger children have not been neglected. Picture Window Books recently published two series of question and answer books. Do Frogs Have Fur? is an example of their Animals All Around series. Questions with obvious “NO!” answers encourage children to turn the page to find out what animal really does have fur. The second series, “Who Is It? Science,” features close-up cropped illustrations that feature one part of an animal – its tail, its nose, its ears, its feet, its eyes, its legs, its mouth, or its skin. The animals chosen are easy for young children to correctly guess before turning the page and learning how useful that body part is.
Making learning fun by making it child-friendly is what these series are all about.