Weed These Science Books Now!

These books are still on library shelves somewhere.

Johnson, Spencer. The value of believing in yourself : the story of Louis Pasteur / by Spencer Johnson ; illustrated by Pileggi. La Jolla, Calif. : Value Communications, c1976.

I assure you, this book is past its prime. Quotes Pasture as saying about his vaccine, "My Magical Soldiers (the vaccine) can march through long needles and into little boys." KWR, UIUC MLIS Student. (Thanks, M.S. for introducing me to this book.)

Kellog, Cynthia. Corn: what it is, what it does / by Cynthia Kellogg ; pictures by Tom Huffman. New York : Greenwillow Books, c1989.

I debated whether to add this book as it may be the best book on corn available. It has some useful information about corn and it lists lots of products that are made with corn. What pushed it over the edge, are loin clothed images of Native Americans that many today would consider offensively stereotypical. Also, statistics are getting pretty old and some of them are presented poorly. KWR, UIUC MLIS Student, UIUC Certificate of Professional Development in Crop Science.

Palder, Edward L. Magic with chemistry; mystery experiments and demonstrations for science clubs, classes, and entertainment programs, by Edward L. Palder. New York, Grosset & Dunlap [1966]

This book is dangerous. The ingredients for the "200 Exciting...Safe--Easy--Inexpensive" experiments include unsafe materials. For example, one ingredient is the known carcinogen tannic acid. Another ingredient is the mercury containing mercuric acid. Also, the drawings are dated, sexist, and not inclusive. For example, the cover shows five blonde boys and one blonde girl. Even more disturbing, some of the experiments tell young readers how to make and ignite "fireworks". This is a very scary book. Weed it now. © 2004 Gene K. Wong PhD, Catherine Wong, MLIS, MS Biology and KWR (01-04)

©2003-2005. Children's Science Book Review, Karen Woodworth-Roman. All rights reserved. Copyright belongs to the individual reviewers. Last modified on 1 Feb. 2005. Contact: E-mail Karen with comments, corrections, and reviews. About