Well here it is – Ask Me Anything – the book that tells you everything you have ever wanted to know.
Its stuffed with lists, trivia, facts, fun and lots of info on just about everything you can think of. So put it to the test and ask a question.
What about:
Will the sun shine forever?
How many oceans are there?
Why don’t some plants have flowers?
Do snakes feel slimy?
Why are most gases invisible?
Everything you have ever wanted to know wrapped up in one book.
Do you like doodling, cutting, sticking or just splattering and splashing? Well I think you have the makings of an artist! So why don’t you wake up the artist in you and check out the book My Very First Art Book by Rosie Dickins and Sarah Courtauld. It has loads of fun artsy stuff for you to do and it has easy to follow instructions and illustrations. Who knows you might be the next Van Gogh in the making.
Most of us are either left or right handed but did you know that you are also left or right eyed? Well believe it or not most humans also have a dominant eye.
If you want to find out which is your dominant eye then this is what you need to do.
Hold your arm up and place your thumb and fingers together to create a hole or circle. (Hold your arm away from your body).
Now look through this hole with both eyes at a small distant object - such as a light switch on the other side of the room. Position your hand so the object is right in the middle of the hole and keep still.
Now close one eye. Did the distant object appear to move? If so, the eye you closed is your dominant eye. If not, your open eye is the dominant eye.
Open both eyes again and realign the hole and this time close the other eye. What happened this time?
You don’t normally notice this preference because your brain usually has no problem combining the separate images from each eye into one useful picture. Sometimes it might pay more attention to one eye, then the other, depending on which is more interesting or important.
Are all right-handed people right eyed?
No, but more people are right handed than left and more people have a dominant right eye too, so most right handed people are right eyed. But there are also lots of people with cross dominance (left eye, right hand and vice versa) but most of the time it makes very little difference.
You can find out lots of stuff about your body in The Surfing Scientist 40 Super Human Body Tricks. All you need is your body, some household items and an appetite for fun.
100 Most Awesome Things on the Planet is the title of this new book. It is divided into 2 sections – Awesome Natural Wonders and Awesome Human Creations. It’s not a huge book but has great photos and blocks of facts for each awesome thing. There is even an “awesome rating” for each entry. Some of the top rated awesomes are Grand Canyon, Monarch Migrations, Blue Whales, Solar Eclipse, Nanomachines, Blackbird(a plane), Spirit of Australia (a boat) and Bagger293. If you want to read more about these or see what the other 92 are, reserve a copy.
Here it is – The Naughty Kid’s Book of Nature.
Nice kids like to learn all about how the caterpillar turns into a butterfly or a tadpole into a frog but naughty kids want to know about squashed hedgehogs, dead pukeko, blood, guts and maggots and let’s not forget the rats.
So come on a journey through New Zealand from the north to the south taking a look at all the animals along the way. Start asking all those questions you have wanted to ask. What’s special about them, why are they the way they are and how long have they been here?
At the end of each section there are a set of question so you can test yourself on how much you learnt or you can just use the keywords to search for more books in the library or on the internet and find out more information about each animal.
With chapter titles such as Road Kill, Stuffed Ones and Living Dead you can see how exciting, smelly, amazing, revolting and wonderful the world of nature can be.
Let me start by saying if you don’t like blood and guts and yucky bits then do not read this book – but if you do then you will love it!
A Painful History of Medicine, Scalpels, Stitches + Scars a history of surgery has some very interesting gory facts about the history of surgery. How did people in ancient time fix wounds, what tools did they use, were people awake when they were operated on.
All these fascinating facts plus more from recent times in medicine can be found in this book – but there’s a warning – you must have a strong stomach!
This book is hard to put down. It is a new New Zealand nature book that details all the animals you might encounter on a road trip from north to south. The Naughty Kids’ Book of Nature does not only focus on our famous animals like the kiwi and tuatara but also daddy long -legs, rats, possums and worms. I love the colour illustrations and reading about the history of these creatures. You will learn something new for sure. I am not convinced about the title though? The blurb on the book explains naughty kids want to know about squashed hedgehogs and dead pukeko and see blood and guts . I think anyone will enjoy this, naughty or otherwise.
What can happen in a minute? I can’t think of an answer for that question until I came across this book, Every Minute on Earth. It is truly an astounding book with funny illustrations and even activities for you to do. Bet you didn’t notice that an average person blinks 15 times in a minute. Hard to be a zookeeper when ten adult elephants can produce 500 grams of poo! Yikes! Don’t hold that sneeze because it travels 2.7 kilometres per minute. Bless you! So read this book and be amazed at how much you can squeeze in a minute.
Do have egg or milk cartons lying around in your house? Why don’t you try and recycle them into awesome carton crafts? Turn them into an Asteroid treasure Box, Buggin’ Out or a Bunny Box! If that got you excited then check out the book 50 Ways to Get Your Carton by Ellen Warwick in the children’s nonfiction area now. Astound your friends and family with your fantastic creations, but you might have to wait until after all the eggs and milk have been used up!
In history, and in legends, dragons were used to represent ideas.
Western dragons were a symbol of evil, or the devil. Scandinavian dragons symbolised greed or pride. But in China the dragon was a symbol of good luck, protection and fertility. Because of this, Chinese emperors used the dragon as their symbol.
Western dragons were not only used to represent evil. Dragon images were also used by kings and their armies on their war standards. They used the image of a dragon to represent power and strength.
In medieval Europe the images of dragons as representing good and bad existed at the same time. Churches had images of saints killing dragons to show good triumphing over evil. But they also had dragon gargoyles. These were stone water drains in dragon shapes, on the outside of buildings, to guard against evil spirits.
If you enjoyed this post and want to read more, you can find out more about dragons in The Dragon Companion: An Encyclopedia by Carole Wilkinson. This is an adult book, but it is okay for kids to read too. All the facts in this post were taken from this book.
Books written for kids about dragons that you might like to read are:
The Nargun and the Stars by Patricia Wrightson
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
The Indigo King by James A. Owen
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