Rebecca Kai Dotlich

This book is perfect when introducing a child or a classroom of children to science. It includes so many different aspects of science (without getting too much into detail) that are vastly different from each other. It explains that science is "so many things" - such as how seeds grow, how trains go, or how hurricanes blow. I thought it was such a cute introductory book and love how it extends the meaning of science to so many different parts of everyday life and nature.

Although I am not fond of poetry, I enjoyed this book. The book was divided into twelve rooms, each with a different type of poem involving curiosity and things that people might wonder about. I particularly liked the poems in the rooms of curiosity, nature, time and science. I felt that these particular poems taught the reader some things about science without seeming like they were teaching a lesson. For instance, the Room of Science used the correct terminology for each of six types of show more scientists, such as geologist and physicist, while using poetry to show them doing something that a scientist of that nature would do at work.The illustrations were beautiful and were clearly related to the poems on each page. I appreciated the ending that suggested to the reader that they could also wonder about things and could begin to address this wonder by doing something like writing a poem, building a model, or looking through a microscope. I feel this poetry book challenges the reader to do more than just passively read the book and to address their own wonder by doing. show less

This book flows nicely. I like the almost song like quality of the words. I thought it was very cute. For example, " a window, a waffle." This book would be perfect for babies one to three, maybe four. I also thought it was quite clever of the author to sneak in a picture of her next book into this book.

Bella and Bean were something of an odd couple: one content to sit quietly writing poetry all day, the other eager to be out and about, experiencing the joy of life, and the wonder of the wide world. Hoping to convince Bella to lay down her pen, and share the day with her, the irrepressible Bean adopts successively more outrageous strategies, from wiggling her toes in her friend's face, to lugging a massive snow bush around. Her seeming lack of success is rather disheartening, until the show more friends' evening picnic reveals just how influential Bean really has been, when it comes to Bella's poetry...

There were definitely things I enjoyed about Bella & Bean, chief amongst them the idea that people and experiences which can be rather difficult at times, are also sometimes the most valuable, the most important to us. Bean is clearly something of a pest, but she also inspires Bella in creative new directions. That said, while I liked the idea of the book, I'm not sure the narrative itself really worked for me - it felt as if the author was trying too hard to be meaningful, to create a Frog and Toad style story - and the artwork, while ostensibly cute, didn't appeal to me. It's not that there was anything really wrong with the book, but I simply couldn't work up any enthusiasm for it. This was a low three stars... show less