Science Year by Year

June 1, 2017

Gr 5-8-This browsing item offers select highlights in the progress of science and technology, from the 3.3 million-year-old stone tools discovered near Kenya's Lake Turkana to the flight of the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for 2018. Select is the key word here, as the discoveries and inventions flanking the time line ribbon that runs across the middle of each page never result in a crowded look. The designer does take occasional liberties-misleadingly putting a photo of a Japanese ceramic pot from the middle Jomon period in an incongruous place on the time line, for instance. Overall, however, the bright, inviting mix of color pictures and concise commentary, enhanced with cross references and frequent breaks for more in-depth examinations of significant advances or figures, will give readers a good sense of what (or who) came along when. A closing "Reference" section adds scattershot but informative overviews of modern sciences and major scientists of the past. VERDICT This volume is no substitute for comprehensive chronologies, such as the one found in Brenda Wilmouth Lerner and K. Lee Lerner's Scientific Thought in Context, but for middle school browsers or students needing a quick refresher, it merits consideration as a useful update or replacement for Robert Dinwiddie's Science Year by Year or Lisa Rezende's Chronology of Science.-John Peters, Children's Literature Consultant, New York

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.