Science Nature Books

I am a birder but always wanted to ID the trees that the birds were perched in. I first took this book out in the field to the Arboretums in San Francisco and Berkeley. I found the book easy to use for IDing native trees. I also took this book with me on a trip to the eastern Sierras and trees that I have previously looked at as "pines" turned into Lodgepole, Mountain Hemlock, Whitebark, Red and White Fir, and Jerrery Pine. It really opened up a new world for me. And naming nature is one way to understanding the wonderfully diverse tree species of the west.

this tree book is amazing.while i hate science, this book got me into it. its still not my favorite subject, but now i like it.

My first grade loved this book. The repetitive phrase every few pages about going to Mexico is one they enjoyed reciting with me. The beautifully painted pictures allow children and adults to enjoy the obstacle-filled mandatory journey (to survive) for the determined little butterfly. The complete life cycle of the butterfly is wonderfully presented and easy to recall. (The book I had also included a note that the butterfly refuge in Mexico where all Monarchs must winter for survival, is slowly being torn down.) An opportunity for letter writing and involvement to help save the delicate and beautifully colored orange and brown little wonders could certainly complete this incredible journey into the life of the Monarch.

This is one of the best children's books I have read in a long time...my kid's love hearing it and I don't tire of reading it again and again....

Wonderful because it tells a true 'nature story' in such a whimsical way.

Gotta Go! Gotta Go! is both entirely delightful and wholesomely informative. Not only does it tell of wonderful, mysterious destiny and miraculous transformation, it also introduces the young reader to the idea of a larger world full of excitement and challenge. Adults may be aware of the gentle, ecologically aware voice in the work through introduction of the main charactar and her pursuit while younger readers will repeat Gotta Go! Gotta Go! when asked "What book?". The illustrations are colorful and deft, the prose elegant and simple. Gotta Go! Gotta Go! is another coupe, and like his book the Araboolies of Liberty Street, gives lesson while it delights. Buy this one, it's a winner!

This is a simple and charming story of a caterpiller with an urge to travel to Mexico. Her neighboring animals tease her (it's too far), but she recedes into her cocoon, emerging as a beautiful monarch butterfly, and proves them all wrong by flying south.

The story has a winsome sing-song refrain ("I gotta go, I gotta go, I gotta go to Mexico!") that children will love, and simple engaging line drawings. I'm impressed that the basic science in the story is accurately presented - the stages of the butterfly's life, its migration, its mating (gingerly and sweetly handled as a "dance" between butterflies) and its eventual return home.

My daughter loved this so much we donated a copy to her pre-school, where they watch monarch butterflies hatch in a terrarium every year. A big hit with the 3-to-5-crowd!

Gotta' Go, Gotta' Go is a wonderful book about a monarch caterpillar and his lifelong "journey." I am a nature center director and we use this book to teach about the magnificent monarch migration. The book is entertaining, fun to read out loud, and best of all, factual.

Eric Carle's book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, is a cute book, but he did us all a disservice when he wrote that butterflies come out of cocoons. Butterflies hatch out of chrysalis, moths hatch out of cocoons. This book by Sam Swope has the correct information.

You'll love it, your kids will love it, and your kid's science teachers will love it when your child already knows one of the major differences between butterflies and moths.

Finished this book a few years back after hearing Colm Kelleher interviewed on Coast to Coast am. I can discern whether someone is being honest or not in their voices, the fluctuations in pitch and emotion during certain retellings of events, etc. and I could instantly tell these two dudes were telling the truth. Plus I've been to the Uinta Basin Ute Rez in Utah and I could feel some very strange energies, very similar to Dulce in some ways on the Jicarilla Apache Rez in New Mexico, another hot-spot of "activity". Anyways, very engrossing read and very scientifically-oriented, you might be surprised. Creeped me out good, especially when IT crawled out of the porthole in the air and went scurrying off, and the animal mutilations. So on so forth. NIDS (National Institute for Discovery Science) funded this project and I thought it was a great read. Beware of the Shamans, curanderos, and brujos which "of course don't really exist" but are lurking inside the crack between the worlds you refuse to peer into, all the time. MUAH HA HA HAAAAA !!!

This book is very interesting for anyone interested in the paranormal, particualrly in Utah and relating to native americans

I had a hard time getting to sleep after reading this book. It was so interesting that I had a hard time putting it down despite the fact that it was probably scarier than most fiction books I have read! Worth the money and time to read. This book will make a great addition to your paranormal/UFO book collection.

Dr. Kelleher is an extremely accomplished scientist who lends his vast knowledge to the study of unbelievable paranormal activity centered on a secluded ranch. Dr. Kelleher's status as a scientist, and his courage in stepping forward into a field ridiculed by so many of his peers, lends much needed credibility to this phenomenon. OPEN YOUR MINDS! This is a MUST READ for all UFO, Bigfoot, and paranormal researchers!

Historical documentation of the Uinta basin where the Gorman Ranch is located was well researched including the long-term history of paranormal activity.

Knapp did an outstanding job of concisely presenting somewhat difficult theories such as parallel universes, alternative realities and the possibility of a "break" in the fabric of such allowing the Gorman Ranch to become one of the hot spots for high strangeness.

Overall, the book managed to outline scientific method and the difficulty of trying to follow "standard" scientific protocol when chasing the elusive paranormal activity found in the area.

If you are interested in learning and classifying weather phenomenon this book is for you. The focus of the book is on clouds and it does a great job differentiating the ten major cloud types and describing the sub-species and varieties. The full color photographic illustrations are outstanding. The author does not get into too much detail about the science behind the phenomena, but that is not the intention.

Such a statement is music to the ears of anyone who strives to encourage curiosity and promotes learning. We carry The Weather Identification Handbook with us in the car, identifying cloud formations, making our own weather predictions. We can grow with the book, now reading highlights, progressing into greater detail and increasing focus with age and ability. Isn't learning that sneaks up as fun, great?

This is an excellent book. It is generously illustrated, giving the user more types of cloud classification than most people will ever need to know. It then goes into storm development and other atmospheric conditions. The information is concisely organized and well presented. This is just an excellent book. Anyone with a casual interest in weather will find this book useful.

The book is printed on good quality stock and is full color throughout. I wouldn't be suprised if this is used as a meteorology textbook. It is reasonably priced so I encourage everyone who reads this review to strongly consider this book.

I am reluctant to criticize any book for being something other than what I expected it to be. I was looking for a 'basic meteorology' book. I wanted a better understanding of fronts, high- and low-pressure areas, wind patterns, world weather patterns, the influence of ocean currents, etc.

If you're looking for weather principles, this book is not for you. Unfortunately (for me), the book takes a taxonomic approach to weather. Approx. 2/3rds of the pages are dedicated to identifying and classifying various cloud formations and optical phenomena. If you read assiduously, you'll never mistake stratus for stratocumulus, cirrus for cirrocumulus, and, aha, there's some altostratus undulatus! And you'll learn of Corona, Glory, and Heiligenschein. Broad weather patterns and principles get short shrift, if they get any shrift at all. About page 178 (out of 192, incl. bibliography, credits, and index) you'll finally get into a discussion of air masses, fronts, depressions, etc.

Publishers are usually responsible for choosing the title. This book is mis-titled.

This serves as the text for my meteorology class. It is quite thorough and offers many useful graphics to help seal the various theories into my brain.

What a joyful book. A wonderful paeon to trees and the wonder they can inspire in kids, adults, the reader. A true arborial appreciation, delightfully rendered artistically by Marc Simont--I can see why this book won the Caldecott. It has aged well, and it carries an important message even today.

A great little book about the beauty of trees. My girl loves trees and she was drawn by the artwork of this book. She especially like a group playing in a tree and the one of the cows resting in the shade.

It's a simple story that talks about the beauty and use of trees. The artwork is far more interesting and as others have mentioned, it won an award for it.

My daughter would love a tree fort. She spoke of it again after seeing the kids in the tree. Unfortunately, our trees are not good for that. At least she helped plant a couple. What was interesting was the fact she talked about doing that after seeing the picture of kid planting a tree.

Short choppy sentences with one page in color and the next in black and white left me wishing this book was done differently. Loving nature, I wanted to really enjoy this story, but I didn't. There were facts thrown in haphazardly with thoughts and there was absolutely no reason for the black and white harsh transition every other page into color. I just didn't get the concept the illustrator was trying to portray. I did like that the pages were made out of paper that felt like it was recycled just for this tree story. And the introduction of, "Trees are very nice. They fill up the sky." was a nice way to start this book, and the ending of, "They wish they had one so they go home and plant a tree too." leaves you with a positive activity, but the rest of it was drab for me.

A great,easy read for kids. "A Tree is Nice" talks to the goodness of trees, while nuturing young minds to become future gardeners and environment friendly adults.

This is a nice book.

It starts out, "Trees are very nice. They fill up the sky".

The picture shows a forest and in the lower corner a boy, lying on the ground, looking up. From a kid's vantage point, trees really do fill up the sky.

It continues, "Even if you have just one tree, it is nice too. A tree is nice because it has leaves. The leaves whisper in the breeze all summer long".

The picture shows a farm, with one tree in a field, and a horse standing under it in the shade...

And so, the beneficial characteristics of trees are touched on, lightly and one by one.

A vintage book, worthy of the Caldecottt Medal it won in 1957.

This book has a great idea, which is to use maps to show how climate change is expected to affect various areas. The big flaw is that it lumps the entire United States together, rather than showing the changes expected in each region. Surely, climate change will have very different effects on Arizona, Maine, and Oregon. How about doing a book specific to the US?

Written to be a textbook, this book is a good introductory primer into the physical science behind global warming. There are also graphs and discussions on what each country is doing financially (by GDP) to help solve the problem and which countries emit carbon and at what rate. It utilizes an extensive amount of graphs and maps, which makes it very easy to visualize the various topics presented.

I am using this currently as a supplemental text book in a community college class in global warming and have found it to be wonderful. It is not, as some other reviewers have seemed to imply, the end all book on the subject and does not delve into extreme detail into any on particular aspect of global warming. In fact, at a mere 128 pages, I cannot see it as more than a light treatment of the subject. What is does is supplement other textbooks which contain more discussion and less visualization.

This would be a good book for those interested in global warming but that have a hard time visualizing the issues. Combined with other, more detailed books, this would provide excellent information. This would also be recommended as text for us in a high school or college introductory environmental science class.

This is an excellent book for those wishing to study the issue of climate change from a geographical standpoint. The maps are excellent - they show exactly where evidence is being found to support global warming, what aeas of the world will be most impacted by global warming, and which nations have committed resources to slowing carbon emissions.

It is a visual guide to global warming, giving a very graphic perspective of the earth as a whole. The scientific explanations of the interacting systems of global winds, ocean currents, atmospheric gasses, and how they are being affected by human alterations, are particularly easy to understand because of the clear diagrams and colorful maps.

As an instructor of physical geography, I find this to be an excellent book for the non-scientist to undertand the physical processes and the science of global warming. The detailed yet easy-to-understand maps and diagrams add another dimension to an often dry and theoretical topic.

This book enters the fray with a good overview relative to alternative energy as the answer - but, in my opinion, fails to embrace the "source" of today's dilemma. To precipitate a change in climate - we need a sea-change in the overall interaction of humanity with water. To achieve this, it would be wise for each of us to become conscious of how our daily decisions impact the world within our reach. What products we buy, how we use energy, the examples we set, what we say to others, how we help ease the burden of other life forms we come into contact with - all have an impact on water and the future of life in our biosphere. And, it is the condition of water within our biosphere that will determine the success or failure of our civilization.

My title says it all! This book is easy to read, pleasant to the eyes with its use of color and visuals, and food for the mind. At last, someone has taken pity on individuals who hear about climate change problems, but have not had the facts about it. I think this book is useful for everyone, and can be used in church, school, and living room settings.

Jay S. Southwick

Dogs and their kin have an extensive fossil record, especially in North America. The authors have recently published three extensive technical monographs on fossil dogs, wolves, coyotes, foxes, etc. based on the unbelievably huge collections at the American Museum of Natural History and elsewhere. This book is essentially a popularization of the technical work, although this volume can be a bit technical in places.

The authors cover the taxonomy of modern Canidae, the origin of carnivores, dogs, and numerous doglike mammals, anatomy, hunting and social activity (not only of modern dogs, but what can be interpreted from fossils), how the evolution of dogs is related to the last 40 million years of climate change, the migration of dogs from North American into the Old World, and a short chapter on domestic dogs.

Included as appendices are listings of all 200 plus fossil and living Canidae species and an evolutionary tree base on the author's research.
The artwork by Antön is wonderfully done with his sketches rivaling his almost photographic looking color paintings in quality. Antön previously has illustrated other books on vertebrate paleontology, including The Big Cats and their Fossil Relatives.

Almost anyone who is interested in dogs and/or vertebrate paleontology should read this book. Natural History magazine has a short non-technical summary article by the authors in July-August '08 issue if you want a good preview. Dr. Wang has a wonderful website with links to much of his research and a pdf of the Natural History article.

The medium sized book provides an excellent, well written, and entertaining summary of the evolutionary history of the canine family; described in the context of the changing geologic, climatic, and biologic conditions of the past 60 million years. The many excellent illustrations truly add a sense of life to both the many living and long extinct species. The book is fairly technical, but is written is such a way as not to scare off the non-scientific reader. I highly recommend it for both the technical and casual reader.

This book is a great follow-up to The Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives and like the forementioned it doesn't disappoint! Well researched, well written and accompanied by outstanding illustrations (Mauricio Anton really displays his talents as a reconstructive artist), this book is a treasure to anyone interested in carnivoran evolution. The list of pertinent reference books relating to mammalian evolution is an added bonus. I just wish it could go into more depth on many of the interesting species it reveals to us. A great introduction to canid evolution, you can't go wrong with this one!

This book encompasses everything that inspired me to pursue paleontological research...the meticulous manner in which the authors document the evolutionary history of dogs, and the unparalleled illustrations that bring those concepts and species to life. The paleontologists who wrote this book are authorities in their fields, and are much respected for the quality of their work. The price tag for the book is a huge understatement of its value. Be glad you are getting such a bargain for a priceless work, just short of picking the brains of the authors themselves!

I purchased the entire set of these books "Everything You Need..." and find that they are the BEST, absolutely the BEST resources I have found in a compact book. I highly recommend these books, not only for homeschooling families but for anyone who wants to "know more"!!

This book, like the others in the series, is full of bright pictures, diagrams and charts.

The chapters are:

What's Life All About? (with an easy to understand description of the various plant and animal kingdoms)

The Animal Kingdom

The Plant Kingdom

Ecology and the Landscapes of Life

Planet Earth

Outer Space

The Physical World

The basic concepts are simply explained, with helpful graphics, so it is very easy to understand.

From the history of plants on earth to the effects of erosion on the earth and oceans, to the table of elements and the laws of motion, every concept is easy to grasp.

This is a wonderful book, and my kids really enjoy it.

Highly recommended for children from 2nd through 8th grade. (Although the book says 4 - 6 grades.)

I am an educator, and in my opinion, this book is an excellent, entertaining resource chockful of scientific information. It covers topics in biology, earth science, chemistry and even physics. The color, interesting illustrations are well done and informative.

I just purchased this book and I am using it as a supplement to Jerry Bobrow's CSET muliple subject test prep book (Cliffs Test Prep) and it is great! It's written in a simple language, and contains all sorts of review,pictures, charts, etc. It has been MANY years since I have studied science and this so far is helping me remember all the material neccessary for passing the test.