Tuesday Storytime: Spring Flowers

This week's program was selected by my coworker.

Flower Garden
Eve Bunting, illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt
ISBN: 0152287760
An adorable black girl works with her father to create a miniature garden in a flowerbox in their city brownstone apartment, as a birthday present for her mother.

Planting a Rainbow
Lois Ehlert
ISBN: 0152626093
A long-time classic. Ehlert's cut-out collages are bright and vibrant, and generally short and sweet. About halfway through the book, there is a section of gradated-width pages that feature different colored bands to show progressively more flowers of that color. Really well designed.

The Flower's Busy Day (Bamboo and Friends)
Felicia Law, illustrated by Nicola Evans
ISBN: 1404812814
Bamboo the panda and his diverse animal friends investigate the day cycle of a flower in this nonfiction-adjacent conceptual picture book. Lots of information packed into a pretty tight narrative. They are cleverly done, but the illustrations aren't quite my style: a little too loose and bright and overproduced. Vibrant and fun and true.

Juvenile Nonfiction: Lives of the Scientists, Kathleen Krull & Kathryn Hewitt

Lives of the Scientists: Experiments, Explosions (and What the Neighbors Thought)
Kathleen Krull, illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt
ISBN: 9780152059095
(Part of a series of "Lives of" books)

First off, I really don't like oversized bobble-head art, but despite that, the faces are well done and engaging, and the other (non-portrait) illustrations are even more attractive, done in a soft-edged realistic style.

Second, I really DO like the effort put into highlighting women scientists, and that they included scientists of color and from non Western backgrounds (although they could have done a bit better, in my opinion - it's still pretty heavily western-centric).

Here's the biographical breakdown, non-Western scientists in bold, and women in italics:

Zhang Heng
Ibn Sina
Galileo
Isaac Newton
William and Catherine Herschel
Charles Darwin
Louis Pasteur
Ivan Pavlov
George Washington Carver
Marie Curie
Albert Einstein
Edwin Hubble
Barbara McClintock
Grace Murray Hopper
Rachel Carson
Chien-Shiung Wu
James D Watson and Francis Crick (with an honorable mention of poor Rosalind Franklin in England)
Jane Goodall

The biographies are short and to the point, focusing on the mind-set (and often on the peculiar personal habits) of these varied scientists.  In addition to their scientific discoveries, the biography talks about their beliefs, their family and children (or lack thereof) the hardships they overcame, and how they died.  Each bio also tries to add a bit of levity by including some 'truth is stranger than fiction' tidbits about their lives.

The For Further Reading page is sadly just one page, but the resources included look solid and comprehensive.