Label: Reviews

September 12, 2013

What I think of "Einstein Anderson" and "Extreme Earth Records" books by Seymour Simon 

by Sarah, age 11 years, Year 6, Earlsfield Primary School, London, England, UK 

I really enjoyed these books. My favourite one was the Einstein Anderson book - "The Impossible Shrinking Machine". 

It was really funny and clever. I liked the fact that it was interactive - you could solve the puzzle before the book. The book was also very easy reading and the drawings are very realistic.  They were cool!!

The other book - "Extreme Earth Records" - was amazing. I loved all the little bits of information. The pictures were amazing!! My favourite one was the first one about the snow.

I would recommend these books to anyone. The only thing that I would change is I would make the Einstein books harder to read and more challenging. But otherwise the books are absolutely GREAT!!!  

Photo: Sarah is the one at the top in the photo, with glasses and wearing the pink baseball jacket - the one at the bottom is her elder sister Molly!

April 16, 2013

Today, 9-year-old Will from Ohio writes a kids’ eye review of Seymour Simon’s upcoming new book, CORAL REEFS. It will be published simultaneously in hardcover, paperback and eBook editions on April 23. 

Hi my name is Will. I usually spend my days learning about the civil war, but I took this week to read and think about Coral Reefs by Seymour Simon. It was a wonderful book, filled with information about a different part of the planet. A part that I don’t get to be with very much.

My favorite part of the book was the colorful pictures. The book started off with a beautiful picture of the coral reef. It was filled with fish of all sorts, colorful corals and bright blue water.

I was also really interested in all the ways plants and animals protect themselves. One thing I learned that I never knew before was that some living things disguise themselves to hide from their predators. An example of this was the sponge that makes itself look like a animal. I liked the puffer fish the best because it has an interesting form of self-defense - making itself bigger and growing spikes.

This book made me want to learn more about oceans and the different life forms that live in them. I recommend Coral Reefs to people who are interested in fish, the ocean or sea plants. The pictures are beautiful and you will learn a lot!

Loved your book!

-Will

March 11, 2013

I’m so excited about my new book SEYMOUR SIMON’S EXTREME OCEANS, which is being published in April. I loved writing this book because although the oceans are the largest space in the universe which is known to be inhabited by living things, they are still largely unexplored. There are fascinating things being discovered all the time below the ocean’s surface!

One of the nice things about being the author is that you receive a box of your new books so that you can see it before it is out in the stores. I sent a copy to my friend Hagan, who is 7-years-old and in the second grade. Here is his "advance review" of EXTREME OCEANS! 

Dear Seymour,

Your new book Extreme Oceans is awesome!  When my Mom showed me the cover, I was so excited to read it because of the pictures, especially the shark, on the front.  I couldn’t wait to see what was inside.  

I love the chapter, Deep, Dark, and Mysterious.  

I learned that at the bottom of the ocean when fish are red they look dark to their enemies and prey.  This is better than being silvery colored, because red doesn’t reflect the light at all.  I didn’t know at the bottom of ocean that the water pressure could blow up an animal if you brought it really quick to the surface.  That is crazy!  

I am going with my Mom and Dad to Alaska for spring break.  I would love to see a whale.  They are huge!  In your book, I learned about a fish even bigger than a whale.  It is called a whale shark and can grow up to be over 50 feet long and weigh 80,000 pounds.  I always thought sharks killed everything in the ocean, but the whale sharks only eat small sea animals from the water it takes into its big mouth.  They sound cool and nice too.  

This was an awesome book!  Thank you for giving it to me before anyone else.  

Love, Hagan

April 19, 2012

It is Cool Video Thursday, and in honor of Earth Day we are showing the video of GREEN, the new book from my friend and fellow author, Laura Vaccaro Seeger.

In this book Laura, who is a Caldecott and Geisel Honor Book author, wonders: How many kinds of green are there? She answers her own question with a celebration of all the greens around us, including the lush green of a forest on a late spring day, the fresh, juicy green of a just-cut lime, the incandescent green of a firefly, and the vivid aquamarine of a tropical sea.

This is a picture book, but it is most definitely NOT just for little kids. It celebrates the beauty of our planet in so many innovative and surprising moments, I feel sure that anyone of any age would enjoy it.

Press play below to see a video preview of this beautifully illustrated book, GREEN.

September 15, 2010

If you haven’t yet seen THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT! from PBS Kids, you’re in for a real treat. The animated series, which premieres this month on PBS stations nationwide (check local listings), stars Martin Short as the beloved Cat, and is designed to spark a love of learning and an interest in science in preschool-aged children.

 We first heard about the program from PBS Kids’ programmer Linda Simensky earlier this year, when she was on a panel that Liz chaired here in New York. Simensky described the meeting where she heard the initial pitch for the series. She recognized the drawing power of the popular Dr. Seuss books, of course, but needed to be sure that the program had the kind of genuine, rich, educational focus that PBS Kids requires. "I asked them {the program makers} point blank, ‘what’s the curriculum?’ And they responded very simply: ‘Physics.’" You don’t hear that every day in a preschool story pitch.

In the end, THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT! sets its educational sights more broadly on the organizing idea of Exploration, for which narrative stories are particularly well suited. In each episode, the Cat in the Hat and his friends Sally and Nick go on a science adventure, such as flying with birds to discover how and why they migrate, or taking a snowcat to the Arctic to explore freezing and melting.

One of the things I liked about the episode that I screened is that there is a subtle shift from the books, where the Cat knows all and the kids are along for the ride. In this new television series, program makers are careful to keep the kids in the driver’s seat, leading the exploration, while the Cat functions as an instigator, cheerleader, and source of gentle mayhem. 

Encouraged by the Cat, the children (acting as surrogates for the child viewers) are the ones who figure things out by engaging in science inquiry.

Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) wrote The Cat in the Hat in 1957, as a response to a national concern that children were not learning to read. The book became an instant classic, and the books were animated for television/DVDs. Seeing how well suited Dr. Seuss and his towering, Rube Golberg-like contraptions are for science education, it’s a wonder no one has ever done this kind of adaptation before!

One of the things that I like best about the program is that it encourages children to find wonders in the world in the familiar world around them. This is particularly relevant to me, as I grew up in a city neighborhood in the Bronx (one of my first books, "Science in a Vacant Lot," was designed to engage urban kids in everyday exploration). Jay Ingram, the Canadian science journalist, author and broadcaster, who is one of the Science Advisors on THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT!, says that this is an important underlying premise for the series. "Backyard nature is full of riches. The issue is that most don’t think about small-scale nature - most people are, if anything, birdwatchers,...