Earthquakes: Witness to Disaster by Judy and Dennis Fradin, National Geographic Books

Have you ever wondered what causes earthquakes?  By reading this book, you’ll learn all about the reasons earthquakes take place.  Maps and diagrams will help you understand tectonics and stunning photos will show you the effects of an earthquake.  By reading the accounts of people who have lived through earthquakes, you’ll get a clearer idea of what it’s like to witness one.

Excerpt:  The ground would not stop shaking.  I turned and watched my house squirm and groan as though in last mortal agony.  It was as though someone had engaged in it in a gigantic taffy pull, stretching, twisting and shrinking it.”  Eyewitness Account.

Tsunamis: Witness to Disaster by Judy and Dennis Fradin, National Geographic Books

In this book you’ll learn about some of the most powerful tsunamis that have occurred in recent history. You’ll find out about the forces that cause a tsunami and the damage that tsunamis can do. Stunning photographs and eyewitness accounts, along with maps and diagrams, will help you understand how plate tectonics cause these gigantic disasters, and you’ll hear from people who have lived through them.

Excerpt: On Maikhao Beach in Phuket, Thailand, a ten year old school girl from England was vacationing with her parents. Two weeks earlier in geography class she had learned about the way that, before a tsunami wave strikes, the sea sometimes recedes from the shore. Tilly noticed the same thing happening in Thailand and warmed her family that a tsunami might be coming. As her family left the beach, they warned other tourists. Thanks to the warming, the beach was evacuated and no lives were lost. “

Chew On This by Eric Schlosser & Charles Wilson

In this book you will learn things that you never knew about food. For example you learn about the fifteen year old who invented the hamburger. You will see how French fries are often shot through a superpowerd gun-and what makes them taste so good. As well as learning the secret ingredient that makes your drink pink and a special ingredient often found in meat. You will explore the six weeks that a fast food chicken lives before it becomes a chicken nugget. Examine a table of healthy and unhealthy human body parts- and see what happens inside your body when you eat too much junk. This book is an eye opener to what we are really eating outside.

Excerpt: the story of fast food begins in October 1885, near the small town of Seymour, Wisconsin. A Friendly and outgoing fifteen-year-old boy named Charllie Nagreen was driving his family’s ox cart down a dirt road amid wide-open fields. Charlie was going to Outagamie County’s first annual fair, where he wanted to earn some extra money selling meatballs. What happened next was the unlikely origin of a delicious sandwich that would one day change the world. As Charlie sold meatballs at the fair, he noticed that customers had trouble eating them and strolling at the same time. People were impatient. They wanted to visit Mr. John Bull popular beehives(encased in glass), to see fancy new harvesting machines, and to enjoy all the other thrilling attraction at the fair. they didn’t want to waste time eating meatballs put them between two slices of bread, people could walk and eat. And so Charlie invented the hamburger.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Today, buffeted by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. Will it be fast food tonight, or something organic? Or perhaps something organic? Or perhaps something we few ourselves? The question of what to have for dinner has confronted us since man discovered fire. But as Micheal Pollan explains in this revolutionary book, how we answer it now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may determine our survival as a species. Packed with profound surprises, The Omnivore’s Dilemma is changing the way Americans think about the politics, perils and pleasures of eating.

Excerpt: Air-conditioned, odorless, illuminated by buzzing fluorescent tubes, the American supermarket doesn’t present itself as having very much to do with Nature. And yet what is this place if not a landscape (man-made), it’s true) teeming with plants and animals? I’m not just talking about the produce section or meat counter, either-the supermarket’s flora and fauna. Ecologically speaking, these are this landscape’s most legible zones, the places where it doesn’t take a field guide to identify the resident species. Over there’s your eggplant, onion, potato, and leek; your apple, banana and orange. Spritzed with morning dew every few minutes, Produce is only corner of the supermarket where we’re apt to think “Ah, yes, the bounty of Nature!” which probably explains why such a garden of fruits and vegetables (sometimes flowers too) is what usually greets the shopper coming through the automatic doors.

Droughts (Witness to Disaster) by Judy & Dennis Fradin

In this book, Judy and Dennis fradin take us from our present day troubles to the worst drought in American history, the Dust Bowel. Eyewitness accounts combined with haunting photographs capture the poignancy desperation of these years. The Fradins have woven these accounts together with an in-depth look at the various causes of drought, a brief history of the most famous droughts, and a look at the efforts of scientists to understand why droughts, a brief history of the most famous droughts, and look at the efforts of scientists to understand why droughts happen and what can be done about it.

Excerpt: The inhabitants of Rajpar, India, were desperate for water. During periods of ample rainfall, villagers lowered buckets a short way down Rajpar’s big well, and then pulled up the water- filled containers. In the year 2000, however, due to a long dry spell, the well contained only a barely visible puddle at the bottom. To get it, villagers lowered a volunteer down the well with ropes. Deeper and deeper she went: 50 feet below ground level. There-20 stories beneath the Earth’s surface- she filled containers with water from the bottom of the well. She was then pulled up to the surface, where she distributed the precious liquid to her neighbors.

Scary Medical Stories by Marie Noble

Many years ago in Europe, people believed that an evil spirit was sweeping across the land. It killed people by the thousands. The deaths were agonizing and gruesome. Before long, the only sounds in the streets were the tolling of funeral bells and the wheels of carts carrying away the dead. Centuries later, several children in a small village in Peru became so frantic that they had to be tied to their beds. Some screamed in terror, while others foamed at the mouth. All of them had one thing in common: They had been bitten by vampire bats. After a woman last her ability to speak, tests revealed a dark spot in her brain. The good news? The spot was not a tumor. The bad news? The spot was a tapeworm, living in her brain. These and other true stories of medical mysteries and terrors await you inside Scary Medical Stories.

Excerpt: The human body is almost too amazing to be believed. Consider these facts: Our heart beats around 100,000 times a day, continuously pumping blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels. And we take more than 25,000 breaths a day. We do all this without even thinking about it. When we touch something, information about what we’ve touched races to our brain at about 240 miles an hour. And our brain holds five times more information than an entire set of encyclopedias. Our eyes can recognize close to one million different colors and shapes. A sneeze rockets dust out of our nose at nearly 100 miles an hour. Perhaps one of the most astounding things about the body is that it can repair itself. Except for our teeth, every bit of our body is living, growing tissue. More than 2 trillion new cells are formed in our body every day. So if we’re healthy, tissue can heal and rebuild itself when it’s broken or torn.

What’s science all about? by Alex Frith, Hazel Maskell,Dr. Lisa Jane Gillespie & Kate Davies

Have you ever wondered what fire is? Or why things fall to the ground? Or what’s alive and what’s not? Scientists have asked all these questions and many, many others too. They‘ve found the answers using science – way of learning about world by watching, coming up with ideas and testing them. And there’s still lots left to learn.

 

Excerpt: What’s biology all about? Biology is all about life- what it is, how it works and why it is the way it is. It covers all forms of life, from the largest living plants and animals to tiny life forms that are much too to see., and it’s also about where these life forms came from, how they’ve changed over time, and how they exist side-by-side all over the earth today. Here are some big questions that keep biologists busy… What is life? It’s normally pretty easy to tell if something is alive, especially if you can see it without a microscope. But biologists study far weirder, tinier things, which may act as if they’re alive in some ways but not others. Even experts often disagree over whether these things are alive or not.

Eyes And Ears by Seymour Simon

 

Have you ever wondered how your eyes and ears work? Or how are they connected? It’s obvious why we need our eyes and ears. But do you really know what they do for our bodies? This book explores how our eyes and ears help us out in our daily life.

 

 

Excerpt: Light travels from objects and passes into our eyes. Light comes from many different sources, including the sun and electric bulbs. When light hits an objects, light waves bounce off in all directions. Special light hits an object, lights waves bounce off in all directions. Special light-sensitive cells in our eyes sense the light and send signals to our brain. Sound waves move through the air and enter our ears. Sound is made when objects move back and forth, or vibrate. The vibrations travel through the air in invisible ripples called sound waves; sound-sensitive cells in our ears sense the vibrations and send signals to our brain. We see and hear when our brain makes sense out of the messages it gets from our eyes and our ears.

Muscles Our Muscular System by Seymour Simon

 

Did you know how many muscles we have in our body and what part they play in our muscular system? Seymour Simon explains this with detailed writing and detailed pictures. It’s a short guide through our muscular system. It’s open up your eyes on how much we really need our muscles.

 

Excerpt: Whenever you walk or run, play an instrument, or turn a page of book, muscles move your body. Even when you’re still, muscles are at work, moving your eyelids each time you breathe. Your muscles are always moving, even when you are fast asleep. Muscles make up about 40 percent of normal person’s body weights. Fat, by contrast, makes up only about 10 percent. IN addition to the 640 muscles that you control, such as your arm and leg muscles, there are many muscles that you don’t control. Among these are your stomach muscles, which aid the digestion your food, and heart muscles, which keeps blood pumping through your body.

 

 

The Heart Our Circulatory system by Seymour Simon

Seymour Simon explains how our heart works and shows detail picture of parts of our heart. He also explains how the blood in our body and ours cell have to do a lot with our hearts, and the parts they play in our circulatory system. It’s amazing how our heart does so much for us.

Excerpt: Make a fist. This about the size of your heart. Sixty to one hundred times every minutes your heart muscles squeeze together and push blood around your body through tubes called blood vessels. Try squeezing a rubber ball with your hand. Squeeze it hard once a second. Your hand will get tired in minute or two. Yet your heart beats more than thirty million times. In an average lifetime a heart will beat over 2,000,000,000 (two thousand million) times. The heart works hard when we relax or sleep and even harder when we work or exercise. It never stops for rest or repair. The heart is a most incredible pump.