Newest Children's Non-Fiction Reviews
The Story of the Car by Giles Chapman and Us Now
Dinosaurs… farm machinery… science fiction… trains… cars. I can't think of many other subjects that inspired the young me to have a full non-fiction book about them on my juvenile shelves. Most of course I lost interest in with maturity. But the young child these days won't be much different, for good or bad, and so they will like as not want a book about broom-brooms for the shelf. And this is pretty much the go-to volume for such an interest. Full review...
In Focus: Cities by Libby Walden
The first book in this series promised 101 close-ups, cross sections and/or cutways, but here we're restricted to just ten. Why? Because the subject matters are so much bigger – one is home to 37 million people, of all things. Yes, we're talking cities, and while this book tries to follow the previous – different artist every page, an exclusive inside look within the volume, and a self-deceiving page count – we are definitely in new territory. We're seeking the trivial, the geographical and the cultural, all so that the inquisitive young student can find out the variety to be had in the world's metropolises. Full review...
Minecraft Guide to Creative: An Official Minecraft Book From Mojang by Mojang AB
Minecraft isn't just about surviving Creeper attacks or crafting enough torches to stop the Skeletons from spawning near your respawn point. Alongside the survival mode there is also the Creative side. This book explores what you can do when you aren't having to make everything from scratch. Full review...
Minecraft Guide to Exploration: An official Minecraft book from Mojang by Mojang AB
Ever wondered how on Earth to get started with this 'ere Minecraft malarkey? Look no further as this is the guide for you! Full review...
My Book of Birds by Geraldo Valerio
I never really caught the bird-watching habit, even with the opportunity of growing up on the edge of a village in the middle of nowhere. It was in the family, too, but I resigned myself to never seeing much that was spectacular, and once you've seen one blackbird you've seen them all, was my thinking. If I'd had this book as a youngster, who knows – I may have come out of it differently, having been shown the diversity of the bird world in snippets of text, and some quite unusual illustrations… Full review...
Cool Coding: filled with fantastic facts for kids of all ages by Robert Hansen
An introduction to coding aimed at ages 10 and upwards. This book is filled with enthusiasm, information, fun and… unfortunately it just falls flat of its goals. Full review...
The Movie Making Book by Dan Farrell and Donna Bamford
In my youth we had to make do with a camcorder that would fit a mini-tape that you recorded onto. This mini-tape would then slip into a casing that could be watched on your VHS (imagine something like a DVD player, but with awful fidelity). In all, making a film was a big old faff, but trying to do anything fancy was almost impossible. There is no longer this excuse for kids today with their camera enabled smart devices, but just because they can do something does not mean they will be any good. A guide for movie making would certainly help! Full review...
Doodle Dogs: Best in Show by Tim Hopgood
Doodle Dogs introduces a wide variety of artistic styles through the idea of a dog show! Tim Hopgood shows us different kinds of dogs, all of which can be created very easily, and you soon find that doodling a dog can be a lot more detailed, and interesting, than you perhaps previously appreciated! Full review...
Think and Make Like an Artist by Claudia Boldt and Eleanor Meredith
Having been banned from the Tate Modern by my partner for making too many snarky remarks, I am not sure that I ever want to think or make like an artist. My unartistic brain is unable to comprehend most art. I see a rain dirty valley, but the artists sells you Brigadoon. A lot of what makes art great is knowing what it is meant to represent; even I have been swayed on occasion once I have been informed. Therefore, to teach art appreciation to a young audience will hold them in good stead and could also be great fun. Full review...
Children's Illustrated Thesaurus by DK
One of the most valuable literary skills which children can learn is how to use reference books. As a child every question which I began with how do you spell...? would be answered with EXACTLY as it says in the dictionary. This was fine, but the family's Collins Little Gem Dictionary didn't encourage exploration, not least because the font was small and difficult to read. Fortunately those times have now changed and reference book for children are now much more inviting. Not every book comes with a set of instructions but it's worth studying the How to... section, not least because similar systems are used in other reference books. Full review...
First Science Encyclopedia by Dorling Kindersley
I wasn't introduced to 'science' until I was eleven and went on to senior school: I wasn't alone in this, but it really was too late. Thankfully, times have changed and children at primary school are getting to grips with plants and animals, atoms and molecules and even outer space from a very young age. What's needed is a good, basic reference book which will introduce all the subjects and give a good grounding. It needs to be something which would sit proudly in the classroom library and comfortably on a child's bookshelf. The First Science Encyclopedia would do both well. Full review...
Origami, Poems and Pictures by The British Museum
Sometimes you find a delight of a book. On an afternoon when it was unseasonably cold and decidedly wet I discovered Origami, Poems and Pictures and I was transported to Japan. As the title suggests we're looking at three celebrated arts and crafts: the ancient art of paper folding, haiku poetry and painting. I'll confess that it was the origami which caught my attention, but I was surprised by the extent to which the rest of the book caught my imagination. We begin with something very simple: a boat and in case you're worried, all the entries have a degree of difficulty (from 'simple' through to 'tricky') and this one is at the lowest level. Full review...
The Beautiful Game by Alan Gibbons
Football is all about its colours. And even if I write in the season when one team in blue knocks another team in blue from the throne of English football, it's common knowledge that red is the more successful colour to wear. But is that flame red? Blood red? The red of the Sun cover banner when it falsely declared 96 Liverpool FC fans were fatally caught up in a tragedy – and that it had been one of their own making? And while we're on about colour, where were the people of colour in football in the olden days? There are so many darker sides to football's history it's enough to make a young lad question the whole game… Full review...
The Big Bird Spot by Matt Sewell
Recently I stood on a viewing platform at the RSPB reserve at Bempton Cliffs as a very helpful volunteer guided my sight line to one of the puffins who'd arrived on the cliffs in the last few days. Finally, I found one, after visually sorting through all the other birds on the precipitous cliff face. It was great fun and very rewarding. The third double-page spread in wild-life author and artist Matt Sewell's first book for children, The Big Bird Spot, shows some cliffs very like those at Bempton, but this time you're going to be looking for twenty three Little Auks, in amongst the guillemots, puffins, herring gulls and razorbills. Oh, and you're looking for a pair of binoculars too: our bird watcher is very careless, because you're going to have to find them in every picture. Full review...
Lift-the-Flap and Colour: Ocean by Alice Bowsher
When you think about it, it's quite startling that oceans cover most of our planet and they're home to nearly half of all species, apart from humans. We don't know a lot about the oceans either - less than 5% of the area has been explored, but it is an area of outstanding beauty. With Alice Bowsher's Lift-the-Flap and Colour: Ocean children as young as two have the opportunity to do a little exploration and to colour their own pictures. The flaps are a stroke of genius: when we look at the sea we see little more than the movement of the water, but how different it would be if you could see a little of what is going on underneath. Full review...
100 Steps for Science by Lisa Jane Gillespie and Yukai Du
Science is a far reaching subject that covers almost everything that exists in the Universe from the smallest specks to the largest space bound objects. Point at anything and there will be some sort of scientist who has studied it. Trying to fit all of this into 100 hundred steps for children is ambitious and should be lorded, but if you are going to try and do this; at least make it readable. Full review...
Spot the Mistake: Lands of Long Ago by Amanda Wood, Mike Jolley and Frances Castle
You'll like as not have seen a children's book before and harangued it for containing errors. This book has at least two hundred, and that's not a problem. Yes, in personifying the idea of learning through your mistakes, we get ten large dioramas of historical activity, all containing twenty things that shouldn't be there. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to try and find them all. And the learning is also here, as we get text to tell us what the goofs were designed to show us. Make no mistake, this is a clever and absorbing read… Full review...
Lighter than Air: Sophie Blanchard, the First Woman Pilot by Matthew Clark Smith and Matt Tavares
We're in Paris, and – not to be too rude about things – we seem surrounded by idiots. For one, it seems they think the perfect place to experiment with manned hot air balloon flights is in the middle of the biggest city in the world. For another, they think only men could suffer the slightly colder and slightly thinner air experienced on such an adventure – women would never be able to cope. Meanwhile, a young girl is dreaming of flight, as so many are wont to do, completely unaware that she will soon marry one of the most famed balloonists. They will have joint journeys skyward, before his early demise – leaving the young woman, Sophie Blanchard, to go it alone and become the first female pilot. Full review...
The Earth Book: A World of Exploration and Wonder by Jonathan Litton and Thomas Hegbrook
The Earth. I kind of quite like it, you know – it seems to serve my purpose. I don't think I've taken too much out of it, all told, and if it's divided up into 200 countries I'm getting close to having visited a quarter of them. But way back when I just didn't get on with studying it. I didn't like geography – what with having to draw maps, oxbow lakes and whatnot I think it was one of those subjects I was put off through the pictorial element – and dropped it as soon as I could. But then, I didn't have the likes of this book to inspire me… Full review...
The Story of Space by Catherine Barr, Steve Williams and Amy Husband
I have no actual idea how I first got an interest in space. Perhaps it's there because I'm so old to almost coincide with the last Apollo astronauts being on the moon (and that's pretty old, it's been so long) and it kind of rubbed off on me. Perhaps in fact all young children are interested in space anyway, and don't need any impetus or reason to look up in wonder. But if they do, this is the newest way of nudging the newer child towards a keenness for all things celestial. And it's a pretty good way indeed. Full review...
Lots – The Diversity of Life on Earth by Nicola Davies and Emily Sutton
How many different kinds of living things are there on Earth? Lots…that's how many. Children will learn lots and lots from this wonderful book. I learned lots from it too. There are 100,000 different kinds of mushrooms. Who knew? Well I certainly didn't. This is one of those special books with cross-over appeal. Tiny children will adore the illustrations, slightly older ones will learn fascinating facts and readers of any age will be moved by the message that we need to take better care of our beautiful environment. Full review...
Build a ... Butterfly by Kiki Ljung
I love butterflies: they're one of the delights of my garden and it's always a pleasure when there are children there and they see a butterfly close up, possibly for the first time, as it rests on a flower. Kiki Ljung has given us the opportunity to learn about butterflies and also to build a 3D model of our own. The book is primarily aimed at the five to eight year old age group, but I have to confess that I had a great deal of fun building my own painted lady. I learned quite a bit too! Full review...
Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo
It's been said very often that 'history is told by the winners'. Well, too often history, the news and even destinies are written by men, and the proof is between these covers. I didn't know anything about this before reading it, even if it has become the most richly-backed crowd-funded book ever. I'd never heard of the Hollow Flashlight, powered purely by body warmth – which is rich if you're old enough to remember the brou-ha-ha when a maverick British bloke did a wind-up radio. I'd never read about the Niger female who has successfully made a stand against forced, arranged marriage, rejecting a cousin for a fate she wishes to write for herself. My ignorance may, perhaps, show me up to be a chauvinist of sorts, but I think it is further evidence that 'the gaze is male' and that the media are phallocentric. I hope too that this book doesn't turn any of its readers into a feminist, for that would be as bad as the chauvinist charge against me. If anything it is designed to create equals, and that is as it should be, even if there is still a long way to go… Full review...
Taking Flight: How the Wright Brothers Conquered the Skies by Adam Hancher
Flight. It happens all around us, wherever we may be, and many are the young audience members for this book who have taken to the air already. But it was once something impossible to take for granted, and this book easily takes us back to those days. It presents us with danger, determination, and a certain pair of American brothers going all out to get both their names in the history books and their feet in the skies… Full review...
The School of Music by Meurig Bowen, Rachel Bowen and Daniel Frost
I have a love/hate relationship with music. I love it in that I own several large bookshelves full of CDs, and have seen and met quite a few noted performers, from Radiohead to Philip Glass, but I hate it in that as regards making it I can only hit things (and that only with my hands, never with my feet at the same time). Only in the last few years have people been at all appreciative of my singing, for want of a better word, and one of those suggested closing my eyes to sound better (I think she also may have plugged her ears when I wasn't looking). That from a kid who was lumbered with something big and brass to lumber about on the school bus with, dammit. But hey, what's the use of my own example being so off-putting, when there is a world of pleasure, mental and physical exercise and fun to be had from being active in music? This book, dressed as the lesson programme of a full-on, proper musical college, is only designed to encourage and inform. But does it? Full review...
Ballerina Dreams by Michaela DePrince and Elaine DePrince
Africa is a place full of music and rhythm and joy of movement. It is not, however, always a place for the structured tuition and commitment required by ballet. Sometimes there are more pressing issues than whether your pointe shoes are darned or whether you have a pianist available or will have to dance to pre-recorded music. For Michaela, growing up in Sierra Leone, her concerns were more simple: where was her next meal coming from, and who was going to look after her now she had been left orphaned by the war. Full review...
