How the World Works: A Hands-On Guide to Our Amazing Planet

by Christiane Dorion, Beverley Young (Illustrator)

Overview

Journey through the story of our magnificent home planet and its spectacular features in this beautifully illustrated picture book paperback about planet Earth.

Answering a multitude of questions about how our world works, this fun, engaging book introduces Earth’s important cycles and offers an exciting way to learn geography and science. Packed with facts, this book encourages readers to think about the impact of human actions on our environment while engendering respect for the natural world. Now available in paperback.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536235753
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	08/13/2024
Series:	Explore the Earth
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	10.88(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.17(d)
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

About the Author

Christiane Dorion is a writer and educational consultant who teaches about sustainable development. She lives in England.

Beverley Young is a freelance artist and illustrator. She studied at Falmouth School of Art, where she specialized in ceramic design, but later returned to painting. She works in acrylic on board and also Photoshop, creating lively, quirky illustrations for children’s books, magazines, advertising, and packaging. She lives in Cornwall, England.

Editorial Reviews

…the visual explanations in How the World Works are…wide-ranging and impressive, covering what truly governs our days: sunlight, fresh water, winds and other key components…Although the clear and informative text carries a pro-environment message, it stays clear of preachiness. The facts are what jump out at you.
—The Washington Post

Abby McGanney Nolan

Gr 3–5—Limiting its purview to the physical world (alas), this pop-up survey devotes pages or spreads to Earth's history and structure, the origins of life, plate tectonics, the water cycle, weather, ocean currents, the carbon cycle, greenhouse effect, plants, and food chains. In snippets of text tucked into every available nook, Dorion provides commentary ranging from basic information on seasons and other cycles to abbreviated catalogs of cloud types and kinds of boundaries between tectonic plates. Mansfield's special effects are really the strong suit here. In contrast to small, if occasionally lively, painted illustrations and a low-key overall color scheme, the sturdy moving parts offer a stimulating array of movements, from an inset flip booklet showing the continents in motion on one spread and an unusually tall pop-up mountain range rearing up on the next to an array of large pull-out tabs and turn wheels. Far too broadly focused to have much research value, this is nonetheless a worthwhile purchase for its unusual potential in displays and demonstrations.—John Peters, New York Public Library

School Library Journal

This chock-full-of-facts survey of earth and environmental science sets itself an ambitious goal, covering the Big Bang, seasons, the beginnings of life, continental drift, the water cycle, weather, oceanic currents, carbon, the greenhouse effect, photosynthesis and the food chain. It does this in diagram-heavy spreads enhanced with pop-ups and pull-tabs. At their best—as in demonstrating the different types of tectonic plate action and showing, layer by layer, the carbon footprint of a cheeseburger—the movable elements add dramatically to the information conveyed. At worst, they simply provide more surface area to cram facts into. Dizzyingly busy, this exploration provides plenty of information and some naked environmental exhortation ("having a small carbon footprint is much better for the planet than having a big one!"); young eco-browsers will return for multiple readings. (Pop-up nonfiction. 7-11)

Kirkus Reviews