April 16, 2013
As beautiful as a painting! That’s what I feel when I see this magnificent photograph of a section of our planet Earth, taken by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station. Can you tell what we are seeing in this photograph?
If you guessed that these are farmlands, you were correct. We are looking at an agricultural landscape in Minas Gerais state, Brazil. These fields are just outside of the city of Perdizes, which means "partridges" in Portuguese. Farmers are growing sunflowers, wheat, potatoes, coffee, rice, soybeans, and corn in the green fields, while the sections that are violet, reddish and tan are fields that are lying fallow - not planted this year while they restore their minerals and other nutrients. You can even see small streams, extending like silvery fingers through the landscape.
I never tire of looking at all the amazing photographs that are beamed back to Earth from space. How about you?
Posted by: Seymour Simon
April 15, 2013
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Fifteen years ago I wrote three books about the amazing travels of animals in the sea, over land, and in the air. These animal migration books were very different from what I usually do because they didn’t use photographs. My editor, Linda Zuckerman, had to work hard to convince me that I should do these stories of awesome animal journeys as illustrated books. I kept resisting, saying that we needed to see photographs of the animals on these extraordinary and in many cases inexplicable travels. Then she showed me the work of a wonderful painter named Elsa Warnick. As soon as I saw Elsa’s luminous watercolor paintings, I knew that I had to work with her on these illustrated books.
I’m not sure, but I think these were the first children’s books that Elsa Warnick illustrated, and she went on to do more. Throughout her career as a painter, Elsa was devoted to teaching other artists, and every summer she would make time to serve as a faculty member at the Portland State University Children’s Book Conference. My condolences go out to her sons, Matt and Milan, who wrote last week to let me know that Elsa had died, and to tell me how much our collaboration meant to her.
Elsa lived on the West Coast and I live on the East Coast, so we had rarely been in touch in recent years, until I called her two years ago to ask her permission to republish these beautiful books in digital. Her paintings came alive once again, this time in professionally narrated, digital editions. I am so happy that she was able to see how beautiful they are.
Here is a sample from THEY SWIM THE SEAS, one of the books we did together. Click on the "play" button down below to view (be patient - it may take as long as a minute or two to load the first time you view it). You will see what a wonderful artist Elsa Warnick was, and why I am so proud of these books.
Educators: Every eBook in the StarWalk Kids streaming eBook collection for Schools and Libraries comes with a free "Teaching Link" document, which makes Common Core correlations and suggests related activities. Click Here to download the Teaching Link document for THEY SWIM THE SEAS, and if you like what you see, visit www.StarWalkKids.com to learn more about how your institution can subscribe to this affordable, multi-user collection of high quality eBooks which work on whatever kind of computer or tablet your students are using.
THEY SWIM THE SEAS: SAMPLE
Posted by: Seymour Simon
April 15, 2013
During the entire month of April, we are observing "Meatless Mondays" in our house. And what, you might ask, does going meatless on Monday have to do with Earth Day?
Well, think about the whole process of breeding cattle, pigs, chickens and other sources of meat. The fuel burned transporting feed for the animals, and then transporting the meat from the farm where the animals were bred to your local grocery store creates CO2 emissions - a major source of the greenhouse gasses that contribute to global warming. And there is another source of greenhouse gases that comes from the process of harvesting meat. Animals burp methane gas, and that also contributes to the greenhouse effect.
Going meatless one day every week is a way that each of us can help reduce our carbon footprints, and it tastes good, too!
Here is a favorite recipe in our house and one that we think most kids will enjoy - crab cakes! Click here if you would like to download this recipe and print it out.
There are many more Meatless Monday recipes that you can download from SeymourSimon.com. Click here to find them all!
Posted by: Liz Nealon
April 15, 2013
Today we are compiling links to the many great Earth Day resources for classes and families here on the Seymour Science blog. We have been celebrating Earth Day here since 2010, and we realize that many of you may not have been reading the blog over all that time. And some of you have told us that you would like to have links to some of our classic Earth Day stories and activities from previous years.
Here are resources and articles from previous years on the Seymour Science blog that you may want to use with your friends, family or class this month, while we celebrate Earth Day 2013:
Your Carbon Footprint Calculator
One Girl’s Earth Day Promise: Conserving Water
If There’s Global Warming, Why is it So Cold?
We also have many “Writing Wednesday” exercises on Earth-related themes. It doesn’t need to be Wednesday if you want to try your hand at writing about these topics!
Writing Wednesday: The Coldest Place on Earth
Writing Wednesday: The Hottest Place on Earth
Writing Wednesday: Compare and Contrast Seymour Simon’s Earth Writing
Writing Wednesday: Sandhill Crane Rescue!
Writing Wednesday: A Spectacular Volcano
Writing Wednesday: Polar Bears and Global Warming
Writing Wednesday: Stone and Water
Posted by: Liz Nealon
April 5, 2013
Here’s something to think about as we prepare for Earth Day. The Scandinavian country of Denmark generates 25% of all the power used in the country with these offshore wind turbines. Denmark’s government plans to increase that outpu to 50% of all power by 2020.
There are natural, constantly renewing energy sources all around us, like the sun, the wind, or the constant movement of the tides. What could we do in our country to generate more of our power from these clean energy sources?
Food for thought as we approach Earth Day, 2013.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
April 4, 2013
Something extraordinary happened on the first spring day up in the country (the Hudson Valley in New York State). Not the first day of spring (that’s March 21st) but the first day that feels like spring, which can be any day from early March to mid April. Well, we had a day like that last week and naturally we went looking for early signs of spring like spring peepers. So we were visiting pond after pond but most of them showed no signs of spring. Many of the ponds were still partly frozen and even those that had no ice still showed no signs of frogs, frog eggs, or tadpoles.
All that changed when we drove past a small spring pond with the car windows open and heard a deafening chorus of what sounded like a mixture of peepers and birds honking. We immediately stopped the car and got out to look. In addition to the usual high pitched chirping of the tiny spring peepers, the pond was alive with honking sounds and large, thrashing frogs. The sounds were deafening. The water looked alive with frogs leaping and grasping and showing sudden bursts of speed. I had never seen anything like it before. I had binoculars and a camera but the frogs were too far away from where we stood to really identify them. It was only after I got home and did some research that I found out what kind of frogs they were and what was happening.
I went to my computer, opened up the Google Search, and typed in "Frogs Quacking like Ducks". Sure enough, the answer popped right up.
The frogs were wood frogs, a small (1 to 3 inches long) blacked masked frog that lives in the eastern United States from Georgia all the way up to the Arctic Circle. It is the only frog known to live north of the Arctic Circle. Usually they live in wet grasslands or moist woodlands. But they hibernate during the winter and as soon as they thaw out in spring, they head for temporary ponds formed by spring rains and snow melt.
The wood frogs use these ponds to make and lay eggs. The male frogs call to the females with duck-like quacks. The females lay their eggs and the males fertilize them in huge masses that contain 1000-2000 eggs. The females move the floating egg mass into the shallow ends of the pond in a large raft of other egg masses. Then all the frogs leave the pond leaving the eggs to survive on their own. The eggs are even able to withstand freezing weather and ice formations. The eggs hatch in a few weeks as tadpoles and the tadpoles take about six weeks to develop into frogs. Another amazing story of the natural world!
I recorded some of the scene using the video setting on my camera. Click play below to hear (you may have to wait up to one minute for the video to load, depending on the speed of your connection. Be patient - it’s worth it!). The wind is blowing, which makes it a little noisy. But, listen past the gusty wind. The first thing you’ll hear are the high-pitched peepers. Listen more closely, and you’ll hear quacking, as if there was a flock of geese flying by. That is the sound of the wood frogs, and it was even louder in person!
Wood Frogs: Spring Pond Frenzy
Posted by: Seymour Simon
April 4, 2013
For yesterday’s Writing Wednesday we asked readers to review a nature poem called "Welcome to the Night," by Joyce Sidman.
My favorite line from the poem was: "The night’s a wild, enchanted park." Isn’t that a powerful phrase? It conjures up all sorts of images in my mind!
I promised that I would post my own review, so here it is.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
April 3, 2013
Good morning, and welcome to Writing Wednesday. Today we are going to write a review of a wonderful nature poem by Joyce Sidman called Welcome to the Night. It is from her book DARK EMPEROR AND OTHER POEMS OF THE NIGHT (Houghton Mifflin, 2010). First read the poem below. Read it more than once, try some of the most delicious phrases aloud, use your imagination to see, hear and feel the words that call out to your senses.
Now that we have read this poem, let’s write a poem review. You can use the form below to get you started. Click here to download your own copy of the form, print it out, and write on it. Tomorrow, I will post my own review of Welcome to the Night. We’d love to read yours, too!
Posted by: Seymour Simon
April 2, 2013
Hooray! SEYMOUR SIMON’S EXTREME OCEANS is being published today by Chronicle Books.
In honor of publication day, we decided to choose our "Cool Photo of the Week" from this amazing book. This is a photograph of the biggest fish in the ocean, the whale shark. Do you see, at the top right in the photo, the size of the human snorkeler compared to the whale shark?
A whale shark can grow to be 50 feet (15 meters) long and can weigh as much as 80,000 pounds (36,288 kilograms). It has a huge mouth and approximately 3,000 very small teeth. Fortunately, the snorkeler has nothing to fear from this huge fish, which does not have much use for its tiny teeth. The whale shark swims with its mouth wide open to collect seawater, then pushes the water out through its gills and eats the small sea animals that are trapped inside its mouth.
Barbara A. Ward, writing in IRA’s Reading Today wrote of EXTREME OCEANS: "The text and photographs in this engaging nonfiction title are sure to appeal to middle grade readers, especially those attracted to anything extreme, in this case, ocean extremes. The book contains twelve short chapters that explore oceans that are extremely warm and those that are extremely cold as well as the life-threatening enormous waves and tides that sweep in from the ocean’s depths so swiftly. In his usual straightforward style replete with interesting details, this nonfiction maven also covers tsunamis, hurricanes, and sea creatures so incredibly dangerous that no diver wants to encounter them, even briefly. Even those who know plenty about the world’s oceans will still be able to add to that knowledge after reading this photograph-filled book. It has an ocean of interesting facts for readers to share with others."
Posted by: Liz Nealon
April 1, 2013
I love this poem, from an anthology that I published a number of years ago. Actually, this is prose that I adapted from WALDEN, written by the great American author, philosopher and naturalist, Henry David Thoreau. I think these lines scan beautifully as poetry, don’t you?
This whole earth which we inhabit
is but a point in space.
How far apart, think you,
dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star,
the breadth of whose disk
cannot be appreciated by our instruments?
Why should I feel lonely?
Is not our planet in the Milky Way?
Posted by: Seymour Simon
