Math Curse and Science Verse. (January 20, 2005)

    A decade ago Jon Scieszka wrote Math Curse while Lane Smith contributed the marvellously zany pictures. Still in print it has gotten such accolades as "As close to genius as one gets in a picture book."

Teacher, Mrs. Fibonacci, tells her class of 7-year olds, "You know, you can think of almost everything as a math problem," and that germinates the seed of the Math Curse for the little girl; the hero of the story. Suddenly all the world around her becomes a math problem. How will the math curse ever be broken? By using math, of course. For kids who like math, for those that hate it, for parents and even for parliamentarians this book is as fresh today as when it was created.

Math Curse - Viking Children's Books, ISBN: 0670861944

Now Scieszka and Smith have come out with Science Verse. Published this past September the text is a series of poems which scan like well known rhymes and songs. Pitched at six to nine-year-olds it will have a much wider appeal. Kids will love having the poems read to them. And it'll be a pretty dour parent that won't enjoy doing the reading.

'Twas the night before Any Thing, and all through deep space,
Nothing existed--time, matter, or place.
No stockings, no chimneys. It was hotter than hot.
Everything was compressed in one very dense dot.

When out of the nothing there appeared with a clatter
A fat guy with reindeer and something the matter.
His nose was all runny. He gave a sick hack.
"Oh, Dasher! Oh, Dancer! I can't hold it back!"

He huffled and snuffled and sneezed one Ah-Choo!
Then like ten jillion volcanoes, the universe blew.
That dense dot exploded, spewing out stars,
Earth, Venus, Jupiter, Uranus, and Mars,

Helium, hydrogen, the mountains and seas,
The chicken, the egg, the birds and the bees,
Yesterday's newspaper, tomorrow's burnt toast,
Protons and neutrons, your grandma's pork roast.

The universe expanded. The guy said with a wheeze,
"Who will ever believe the world started by sneeze?
So let's call it something much grander, all right?
Merry Big Bang to all! And to all-- Gesundheit!"

Science Verse -- Viking, New York, 2004. ISBN 0-670-91057-0.

Perhaps when Science Meets Parliament, FASTS might give copies to each parliamentarian with the hope he/she would read them to their children or grandchildren.