Tag: STEAM

“Dem Bones Gonna Rise Again” – Paleontology Picture Books

Lynn: Kids are fascinated by dinosaurs as librarians can attest just by pointing to the decimated shelves of 567.9s. Today we have two new books that are not only about dinosaurs, they are also about the discovery and excavation of two HUGE and important sets of bones.

The first is Titanosaur: Discovering the World’s Largest Dinosaur (Scholastic/Orchard, 2019) by the two paleontologists, Dr. Jose Luis Carballido and Dr. Diego Pol. It all began on a hot summer day in Patagonia, Argentina, when a gaucho looking for a missing sheep found a large mound with what seemed to be a huge bone. A few months later while in town, the gaucho passed the museum with a dinosaur skeleton on display. He went in and told the two paleontologists that he had found a bone that looked just like those on display. Rushing to the site, Dr. Carallido took one look at the bone and site and knew they had something special.

Using clear accessible language, the authors explain the exciting but difficult task that followed including the careful excavation, examination, preservation, transport, and reconstruction of the enormous bones. The skeleton turned out to be the largest dinosaur bones found so far, a Titanosaur, a dinosaur that weighed over 70 tons in life. The remote site and the size of the bones provided huge hurdles for the team of scientists to overcome.

The illustrations by Florencia Gigena are as stunning as the discovery. Taking full advantage of the oversize format, Gigena’s watercolors fill the pages, providing a wonderful immediacy that also further extends the text. Color photographs are inset on sidebars that provide additional explanations of the events or scientific terms. A jaw-dropping 2-page photograph of the re-assembled skeleton is a splendid finish to this fascinating book. This riveting book is sure to inspire a new generation of paleontologists!

Cindy: Our second book is the nonfiction picture book When Sue Found Sue (Abrams, May 14, 2019), by Toni Buzzeo that unearths the story of Sue Hendrickson’s discovery of the largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton found to this date. Sue’s fascination with finding things began in childhood and she became a collector of curiosities while she fueled her curiosity for learning. This led her on adventures diving in oceans, searching mines, fossil hunting in Peru and finally searching for dinosaur fossils in North Dakota where, after several years, a hunch led her to a cliff where she discovered three backbones. The bones would eventually be excavated and named Sue the T. rex, on display now at The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. I visited the museum years ago when the bones were being prepared for the exhibit and it was fascinating to learn about that process. 

An author’s note details some of Henderson’s other scientific areas of expertise as a “self-educated woman of science,” and mentions the dispute over ownership after the T. rex discovery. Diana Sudyka‘s gouache and watercolor illustrations use many natural colors (and even some earth pigments) to bring Sue’s discoveries and adventures to life. This story should inspire other young children to observe carefully and follow their own curiosity wherever it may lead.

 

Inventor of Nothing: Rube Goldberg for Kids

Cindy: Just Like Rube Goldberg by Sarah AronsonI’ve long been a fan of Rube Goldberg’s crazy impractical inventions but knew little about his path to producing them. Just Like Rube Goldberg: The Incredible True Story of the Man Behind the Machines (Simon & Schuster/Beach Lane, 2019) by Sara Aronson delivers the goods, and with much less meandering than Goldberg might have used. Children who know nothing about Rube Goldberg or the game of Mousetrap that his work spawned, will still be attracted to the book by the zany cover art that turns the inventor’s name into one of his own silly inventions.

Rube’s childhood interest in art and desire to grow up to be a cartoonist met with dismay and horror from his German immigrant parents who feared for his future. He earned an engineering degree from the University of California, Berkeley and became a city engineer but quit after six months, hating the work. He kept drawing while he did grunt jobs at the San Francisco Chronicle but he never quit drawing. After the 1906 Earthquake, he ended up moving to New York City where his cartooning career took off. His favorite comic work was perfectly timed with the industrial revolution as machines took over many jobs. Goldberg invented nothing useful as he used absurd pulleys, levers, and other more oddball additions to make a simple task very complicated. For instance, a machine to put holes in doughnuts starts with a goat chewing a carrot, that moves a ghost to scare a bird to lay an egg that eventually results in a cannon blasting a ball up through a lump of dough tossed above it by “Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts,” Rube’s cartoon alter ego.

While aimed at a younger audience, older readers (and STEAM teachers) will delight in this introduction to Rube’s work.

Lynn: Sarah Aronson does a wonderful job of bringing readers a sense of Goldberg’s personality, his curiosity, and clear-eyed appreciation of the ridiculous. As he said, machines were a “symbol of man’s capacity for exerting maximum effort to achieve minimal results.” I love illustrator Robert Neubecker’s colorful humorous illustrations that do such a terrific job of capturing Goldberg’s manic style. Kids will be captivated and motivated to create their own Goldberg-type designs.

We can’t resist concluding our post on this engaging picture book by mentioning another tribute to Goldberg and his spirit. The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest is a competition held annually at Purdue University. The history of the contest dates back to the 1930s when it began as a competition between two engineering fraternities. Today the contest has been expanded beyond just the university level to include elementary, middle, and high school students and can be done either as a physical or online creation. The competition is meant to celebrate Goldberg’s spirit as well as to encourage and develop an interest in engineering, design, problem-solving, and having fun.

This year’s challenge is to put money in a piggy bank – in as complicated a Goldberg way as possible. Take a peek at this video of the Purdue University team’s solution to the 2017 challenge of putting on a band-aid!

But, wait! There’s more...check out these other titles to extend the learning and the fun:

The Art of Rube Goldberg: (A) Inventive (B) Cartoon (C) Genius (Abrams, 2013) by Jennifer George (Goldberg’s granddaughter)

Build Your Own Chain Reaction Machines by Paul LongBuild Your Own Chain Reaction Machines: How to Make Crazy Contraptions Using Everyday Stuff (Quarto, 2018) by Paul Long. Every MakerSpace or STEAM classroom needs this book.

Rube Goldberg Inventions (Simon & Schuster, 2000) by Maynard Frank Wolfe

Ruby Goldberg’s Bright Idea (Simon & Schuster, 2014) by Anna Humphrey. A middle grade novel about a 5th grader who builds a Rube Goldbergesque machine for her school science fair.