Happy July! This is the month for fireworks and stargazing and wonder, which makes it the perfect month for You Are Stardust written by Elin Kelsey with artwork by Soyeon Kim. It begins like this:
“You are stardust./
Every tiny atom in your body came from a star that exploded long before you were born.”
This informational science book reads like poetry, and the facts within will astound your students:
We breathe in more than a million pollen grains with each breath.
The water we drink today is the same water that filled puddles when dinosaurs walked the Earth.
The electricity in your brain is stronger than lightning.
On owlkidsbooks.com, you’ll find a free teacher’s guide, a link to the app, a video showing second graders discussing the book’s themes, and a video that I found fascinating on how the book was made. Soyeon Kim’s dioramas are awesome and will inspire your kids to get out the art supplies. Choose an incredible fact from the book or one from the world that amazes you and bring it to life with a 3-D diorama. You might even ask a friendly librarian at your local library to put your diorama on display. (I know I’d say yes!) I hope that you and your students can be awed like Elin Kelsey and Soyeon Kim were and find beauty in our connections to the natural world.
Guess Who Is Out of the Den?
