Now You Know How it Works: Pictures and Answers for the Curious Mind | Book Review
The Children’s Book Review | November 21, 2018
Written by Valorie Fisher
Age Range: 3-6
Hardcover: 40 pages
Publisher: Orchard Books (2018)
What to Expect: STEM
If there’s one stage all kids go through at some point, it is the “asking difficult questions” stage. Why do birds fly? How does toast happen? Are dinosaurs real? Valorie Fisher’s new book Now You Know How It Works embraces the curious questioning mind, and provides answers – for readers to enjoy and for parents to exhale a sigh of relief over. Now You Know How it Works provides an accessible and user-friendly guise to the inner workings of everything from flashlights, to crayons, to garbage dumps.
The most appealing feature of this volume is the wide variety of subjects covered: entries such as “rubber ball” introduce readers to basic physics concepts, for example, while the entry for “bicycle” focuses more on mechanics, and that for “garbage” introduces social geography (while subtly illustrating for readers the importance of choosing to compost and recycle rather than sending trash to landfill). The volume is packed with features which facilitate accessibility, from a simple table of contents at the beginning, to highlighted vocabulary and color diagrams and schematics. Each entry breaks concepts down into simple, easy-to-understand parts, without oversimplifying the topic (who knew there was so much to know about a straw?!). A great aid to any early-learning STEM program, this book would also be a wonderful present for any curious child (or exhausted parent).
About the Author
Valorie Fisher is the author and illustrator of My Big Brother and My Big Sister, both Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Award winners; and Ellsworth’s Extraordinary Electric Ears, called “sassy” in a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Her photographs have been widely exhibited and are in many major museum collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Ms. Fisher lives in Cornwall Bridge, Connecticut, with her husband and two children.
Now You Know How it Works: Pictures and Answers for the Curious Mind, written by Valorie Fisher, was reviewed by Dr. Jen Harrison. Discover more books like Now You Know How it Works: Pictures and Answers for the Curious Mind by following along with our reviews and articles tagged with How Things Work, Picture Book, Science, and STEM.