HOW DO SCIENTISTS ASK QUESTIONS?

Think like a scientist: Ask questions!

This latest title in the publisher’s How Do? series describes the scientific method, introduces some famous scientists, and encourages readers to perform scientific demonstrations. Its strength is in its clear depiction of the scientific method—laid out step by step in the text and summed up in a diagram: observe and come up with a question, research, formulate a hypothesis, experiment, analyze the results, and come to a conclusion. Lively cartoon drawings feature a diverse range of young people doing science-related things, while scientific symbols and objects fill the pages. The author uses child-friendly questions as examples during her explanation of the method and discusses the importance of sharing results. The scientists introduced are diverse in gender, race, time, and fields of interest. Hayes wraps up by presenting three “experiments” that connect to particular scientists and their discoveries: Galileo and gravity, Charles Darwin and natural selection, and Rosalind Franklin and DNA. These are activities and demonstrations, not experiments. Making fossils will not help readers understand Darwin’s theories, while creating a model of DNA out of candy will help cement the image of DNA’s structure but reveals nothing about what it does. Though the information on the scientific method is sound, the concluding activities are lacking. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Science-y but not science.