Do you like to read poetry and like learning about science? Here’s a fun and colorful book that allows you to enjoy both at the same time.
Spectacular Science is a book of poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins which incorporates the beauty of poetry with the fascination of science. From describing the essence of science in terms a child can understand to identifying specific topics in science, this book covers many different interests a child may have in the broad science field. Hopkins has chosen specific poems about images and ideas that children are familiar with. In entitling his poems, “Snowflakes” and “Dinosaur Bone”, Hopkins invites children to begin to see that the things they encounter in everyday life, the things they love, are all a part of science. The poems also describe instruments which are used in conducting scientific experiments and how they are employed. While using rhyme and rhythm, this excerpt from the poem entitled “Under the Microscope” written by Hopkins himself, provides an insight into the world that is too small to view without this tool.
Unseen with
an unaided eye
amoebas
glide
on a small
glass slide.
Along with the beautiful language and the scientific overtones, the illustrations jump off the page in strange and bright ways. The drawings coincide with the poems in that they depict the main idea or topic of the poems but they are also somewhat abstract. Children will love to wonder at the bizarre interpretations of the creatures that fill the pages along with the thought-provoking poems.
Curriculum Connections
This book may help a child understand the way in which magnets attract (K.3) and the concept of its poles. Water’s phases are alluded to in a poem about ice and water.(K.5) (2.3)Also, a child may learn the way a prism works and how it produces a rainbow.(5.3)
Additional Resources
- Learn about the different states of H2O.
- Here’s a “hair raising” electricity experiment for kids.
Book: Spectacular Science
Author: Lee Bennett Hopkins
Illustrator:Virginia Halstead
Publisher: Aladdin Paperbacks
Publication Date: 1999
Pages: 37 pages
Grades: K-2
ISBN: 0-689-85120-0