Be Brave, Be Brave, Be Brave: A True Story of Fatherhood and Native American Heritage* by Native American author F. Anthony Falcon comprises the thoughts of the author about what lessons he would pass from his heritage to his son.

There is also a Hurricane. This is a large format picture book with text to read to a young one, mainly. Adults will enjoy the read as well.

Copycat Science and Nature’s Light Spectacular are two books I have already reviewed. They are excellent, highly recommended, and I’m putting this reminder here to remind you now that ’tis the season to give your covid-quarantined friends and relatives with kids a nice book.

For littler kids just learning to read and spell, The B on Your Thumb: 60 Poems to Boost Reading and Spelling by Colette Hiller* is a clever expose of the irony of letters and words designed to help kids spell in this zany, crazy, language called English.

Continuing along on the theme of words, since your first kid ate the last letter book, consider a newer version, printed on heavy card stock and with no sharp edges, ABC for Me: ABC What Can I Be?: YOU can be anything YOU want to be, from A to Z by Sugar Snap Studio* adds adventure and diversity to this genre. Each entry (I think there are about 26 of them) is a person in a profession, such as “Game Developer” and “Helicopter Pilot.”

All of these books are solid works of printing, colorful, excellently illustrated, well composed and written, and fun.

The book I want to tell you about now, Life on Earth: Dinosaurs: With 100 Questions and 70 Lift-flaps! by Heather Alexander and Andres Lozano, is very wordy. For example, it might say “how did a dinosaur become a fossil? on the flap, and underneath it give the three stages of diagenesis. Oddly, the book is listed on Amazon as being for preschool to first graders, but the material is way advanced beyond that. I’d put this book at 2nd-3rd grade. But it is a flip book.

As noted in the title, there are 100 different questions, all with answers, with 70 of them being written on flaps.

I learned something interesting. I had not known about Therizinosaurus with its very long claws, thought to be used for digging. But I was very disappointed to find out that the teeth on this critter were clearly not adapted to eating roots. Oh well. (The latter was not in the book, something I had to research elsewhere.)

The answer to the question, “Why did the dinosaurs die out” is found under three separate flaps, each with a different hypothesis. That is in fact the current “consensus” as I understand it. Some will object to the book not insisting that dinosaurs never went extinct because there are birds. But they did, of course, go extinct. Just like the synapsids went extinct. Or did they?

Anyway, Life on Earth: Dinosaurs: With 100 Questions and 70 Lift-flaps! is a fun book, good for kids in first, second, or third grade.

In the same series: Life on Earth: Human Body, Life on Earth: Farm: With 100 Questions and 70 Lift-flaps!, and Life on Earth: Jungle: With 100 Questions and 70 Lift-flaps!. I only briefly looked through the “Jungle” book (as it were) and, as do most kids books on jungles (aka “rain forests”) it conflates the forest, savanna, and all the animals on all the continents. Hard to get away from that.

Here is a way to do that.

But seriously, some of these are real concerns, and Boys Town has decided to take the bull by the horn, as it were, and produce some books that may be helpful in this area. I’ve got three examples right here.

Boys Town is a non profit organization originally founded as an orphanage by a priest (Father Edward Flanagan), in Nebraska. You may have heard the slogan “He ain’t heavy, Father, he’s my brother.” That’s from Boys Down. Spencer Tracy played Flannagan in the movie “Boys Town” and the sequel, “Men of Boys Town.”

This is all very suspicious and seems too religious to the average modern atheist like me, but I’ve looked over these books very carefully and I do not think they contain hidden religious messages.

The Technology Tail: A Digital Footprint Story (Communicate with Confidence) by Julia Cook and Anita DuFalla pins a tail on the subject (the reader, the kid) and adds all the bits and pieces of Internet/Online behavior we accuulate through life as a seven year old. Your Facebook feed, Instagram, etc. Then it shows how this tail follows you around and when future employers or school admission councilors stalk you on the internet, they judge you.

It is a little scary but I think it makes good points.

Mindset Matters (Without Limits), by Byran Smith and Lisa Griffin, is more general in its focus, helping kids to not be afraid of new challenges, and to enhance their confidence. That is a huge issue with first and second graders. It helps that the main character in this book is a girl.

Hey Goose! What’s Your Excuse? by Lisa Griffin also addresses confidence and getting out of one’s comfort zone, in this case, from the perspective of a nervous-nelly gosling.

All of these books are suitable for kids from 4-8 years, ore perhaps a bit older in some cases. Kids just beyond an intro reading level can probably read them on their own (but better to the parents to get feed back and the parents can then learn some tricks), or the books can be read to the kids.

The Outdoor Science Lab for Kids and the other books in the same series are excellent, highly recommended, and reviewed here.

Treecology is also a science activity book that people seem to love. Chance are you already have it. Obviously, it focuses on trees, but that does not stop it from being year round, and there are, of course, many non-tree things that relate to trees, and that stuff is covered as well. My review.

Electronics for Kids and The Arduino Project Handbook are great DIY books, the first explicitly for kids, and the second for older kids or adults, or younger kids working with older kids. Click the links to see my reviews.

For kids into math and related fields, check out the Manga guides. Here, I review the latest one on Regression Analysis, and in that post, I’ve got a list of the others.

For smaller kids, there is a new (early last year) David Macaulay book on machines. The book itself is, in fact, a machine.