Jackie HoldernessCritiques

Non-fiction (Children)
This is one book from the ‘Who? What? Why?’ series. The series concentrates on introducing children to broad scientific ideas with simple experiments. As far as I know none of the books in this series have won any awards, but they are used as a teaching aid throughout the GSACRD school district.

In “What is a Shadow?” Amy, Steve, Jo, Zach and Amy’s parents go to the fair. On the way Amy notices that the sun is setting and the group starts talking about why it gets dark at night. As they explore the fair the group discusses other light related science topics like ‘How can you see at night?’ and of course ‘What is a shadow?’. After they talk about different concepts the children perform easy experiments to illustrate the points made.

“What is a Shadow?” is well written book with bold, colorful illustrations. Jackie Holderness uses experiments that are easily done at home combined with thorough explanations written in language that children can easily read themselves to explore the phenomenon of light vs. shadow. I like the way the book has an explanation, experiment, and self-study type questions for each concept introduced. The answers for the ‘study’ questions are located in the back of the book, right before the handy-dandy index. These books are a great self-learning tool for children 4-8, and fun to read together with parents or as a class.