Nonfiction Monday: Mighty Mars Rovers

The Mighty Mars Rovers: The Incredible Adventures of Spirit and Opportunity Elizabeth Rusch

I'm back looking at more the books on YALSA's Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults long-list.

This is another great addition to the always excellent Scientists in the Field series. Steven Squyres is a geologist who wanted to study the rocks on Mars. He came up with the idea to send a robotic geologist in his place. The Mars Rovers went up in 2003. Spirit and Opportunity were supposed to last about 3 months. They lasted for years. Opportunity is *still* going and doing science.

I really enjoyed the way the book follows the Rovers and the team on Earth. It does a great job of showing how the scientists on the ground had to often quickly build a "fake Mars" to figure out if there was a way they could get a rover out a jam-- up a hill, or out of a sand dune. It's also so well that I almost cried when Spirit went quiet. No little robot who's lasted years longer than you should, don't die!

It also does a great job of explaining why this type of exploration is important and why we're so obsessed with studying Mars.

You can follow the Mars Rovers on NASA's website.

Update: I forgot to link to today's Nonfiction Monday roundup! It's at Perogie's and Gyoza.

Book Provided by... the publisher, for award consideration.

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Elephant Scientist

The Elephant Scientist Caitlin O'Connell and Donna M. Jackson

Hey look! Another awesome Scientists in the Field book!

This one's a little different because Caitlin O'Connell, the first-billed author is also the scientist being profiled. O'Connell works in Namibia, studying elephants.

While there is a lot of information about elephants in general, a lot of the book focuses on how elephants communicate. The problem is that I read Elephant Talk: The Surprising Science of Elephant Communication first, and Elephant Talk is a longer, more in-depth look at that same subject. I can't pretend that didn't color my reading and enjoyment of this title.

I really enjoyed learning how the scientists live when they're observing the elephants. It's not lab work and they can't go home at the end of the day-- they have camping tower that's very sophisticated and rustic all at the same time. They have to protect themselves from lions, take careful measurements and data, and live for months at a time on the savanna-- very interesting.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Manatee Scientists

The Manatee Scientists Peter Lourie

This book follows three scientists, each studying a different type of Manatee-- one in Florida, one in Brazil and one in Western Africa.

I most appreciated the sections on the Amazonian and African manatees, as those are ones we don’t hear about very often. The animals (and those who study them) face very different issues than the ones in Florida that we know so much about. Manatees are so hard to study in Africa that scientists don’t have enough data to calculate basic facts such as average size. Manatee Scientists did a great job of outlining the problems facing the scientists as well as the animals, especially in Africa where they’re often hunted. How can you tell poor people to stop hunting one of their main protein sources? (The hunters are actually one of the best sources of information about manatees.)

A great look at how science and conservation work together and a solid addition to the always fantastic Scientists in the Field series.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Nonfiction Monday: Project Seahorse

Project Seahorse Pamela S. Turner, photographs by Scott Tuascon

Once again, the Scientists in the Field series hits it out of the park.

Project Seahorse is a program that helps set up Marine Protected Areas off the coast of the Philippines. Seahorses are in trouble because there is a great demand for them-- dried seahorses are an important ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine and are also used for curios and knick-knacks. Live seahorses are very popular to use in aquariums, even though they are extremely hard to keep alive in captivity.

In addition to learning a lot about seahorses and coral reefs, Turner also shows why Project Seahorse is so successful as an organization.

The reason Project Seahorse works is because they work very closely with the communities who depend on the reefs for their livelihoods. By working closely with all of the players, they create very important buy-in, so everyone's on board with the project. One thing Project Seahorse works for isn't a complete ban on the seahorse trade, but a more sustainable one. Not only do they work with the fisherman, but also aquariums and Chinese medicine practitioners.

They also take a very interdisciplinary approach their conservation efforts. In addition to observing reef recovery by diving and counting and observing, the scientists also interview the fisherman to see if/how their catches are improving and work closely with them, not just for data, but so that they continue to support the project.

They hope that not only with the reef recover (and it's very much starting to) in the protected areas, but as it recovers, it spills out of the protected boundaries, bringing recovery to the unprotected areas as well (and the fisherman hope so, too.)

Also, the pictures are just FANTASTIC. Seahorses are weird little creatures and there are lots of cool pictures of them, but also of the other fish and life along the reef. Stunning. (My favorite was in the very back, of the weedy seadragon.)

As always, there is also a list for further reading, watching, and researching, as well as tips kids can do right now to help.

Another great book to show why this series is so awesome.

Round up is over at Write About Now. Be sure to check it out!

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Nonfiction Monday: Saving the Ghost of the Mountain

Saving the Ghost of the Mountain: An Expedition Among Snow Leopards in Mongolia Sy Montgomery, photographed by Nic Bishop

I really love the Scientists in the Field series and this is volume is one of the reasons why.

Tom McCarthy studies Snow Leopards, a very rare cat that is rarely seen by humans. They are hunted for their fur and bones and are very good at hiding and blending in with their surroundings.

Like most of the books in this series, there is a biography of McCarthy focusing on how he got interested in science and Snow Leopards in particular. This book also focuses on one trip McCarthy takes, with Sy Montgomery and Nic Bishop in tow, to study the Snow Leopards in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.

They have lots of ways of tracking the Snow Leopards-- some have been tagged on previous trips and have electronic trackers. They follow tracks and other leavings and markings. They set up motion triggered cameras.

In addition to documenting McCarthy's career and the trip, there is a wealth of information about Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, the people and the other animals that live there.

Despite all their work and all their looking, the group never spots an actual Snow Leopard. There, I think, is where this book is truly valuable. To quote Calvin and Hobbes, sometimes, scientific progress goes boink. Ok, not really. But, sometimes science doesn't go as planned. What might seem like a failure of a trip-- traveling around the world to the middle of the desert and looking for weeks, and not even catching a glimpse... despite the appearance of failure, the trip was still very informative for McCarthy. He was still able to collect valuable data not just for his work but for other scientists. They still learned a lot.

While this is a beautifully written and visually gorgeous book is chock full of information about Snow Leopards and Gobi Desert life, I think the most important lesson is the lesson that success doesn't always look like what we think it will, and that science doesn't always work the way we think it will.

I love this book. I think it got more than a bit shafted this past awards season (and not just by the Cybils) because it had the misfortune of coming out in the same year as The Frog Scientist, which is is the same series. But, this book is awesome as well and shouldn't be overlooked.


Nonfiction Roundup is over at Wrapped in Foil. Be sure to check it out!

Book Provided by... publisher for Cybils consideration

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Nonfiction Monday

Two Announcements:

Don't forget to give me all your challenge info for The Reading Challenge Clearinghouse.

Last Tuesday, I ordered a bunch of Diary of a Chav books from The Book Depository. Two of them arrived today! I bet the rest will come tomorrow! (Each book was shipped separately.) Not bad for free international shipping! (Seriously, not affiliated at all, except that I love them because of their awesomeness.)

And now, for your Monday non-fiction-y goodness:

The Frog Scientist Pamela S. Turner

Ok, I'm putting the full disclaimer information up on top for this one, because it may look a little suspect. Usually, I don't review books that are under 100 pages on this blog, just because I have to draw the line SOMEWHERE (just like I don't review audio books here, I have to get some semblance of control.) However, I occasionally make an exception if there is a book that I want to talk about or if the content level is bigger than the 100-page length.

I went back and forth a little bit when Turner offered me this book to review (so, to spell that out, this copy was provided by the publisher) because I knew it was under 100 pages. BUT! I also knew that the Scientists in the Field series was awesome and a great series to give to kids. (I mean, the cover alone on The Bug Scientists will sell it.) So, I decided to review it. I just wanted to let you know what was going on up front.

This story follows an experiment in Dr. Tyrone Hayes's lab at UC Berkeley, where he's studying the link between the pesticide atrazine and the femalization of male leopard frogs. Along the way, we get Dr. Hayes's life story (with some awesome pictures from his college days at Harvard in the 80s--seriously awesome New Wave hair) we meet his family and the students working in his lab and why they're interested. Many are interested in biology and science and want to continue working in the field, but one was the child of migrant workers and was more interested in how the pesticide effects people who breathe it in everyday while working in the fields.

The book focused a lot on pesticide risks to frogs, because that's where Hayes's research is, but did talk about other things effecting frogs and other variables in the puzzle, and it also talked about why we should care.

Lots of big pictures of frogs (and frog dissection) as well as daily lab life illustrate the text and make it an easy hand-sell. I really liked the fact that the lab was full of women and people of color doing science, but I kinda wondered where the guys were. I also liked how the reader gets to see how lab science really works (let's do this experiment over and over again to make sure our results are consistent! Now! To wash the test tubes!)

I like this entire series and this is a good addition.

Round-up is at MotherReader!