ABCs of Engineering

ABCs of Engineering is part of the “Baby University” series, and, like the other books in the series, it tackles advanced concepts for children. Like other ABC books, it has all the letters of the alphabet, in this case only the upper case letters, with an example of a word that starts with that letter as can be seen in the above excerpt. A simple definition of the word follows, and then Ferrie and Kaiser provide a short paragraph that adds additional information related to the word that had been connected to that letter of the alphabet. This “graded” approach means that the book can be read on three different levels: babies, pre-schoolers and kindergarteners. Some of the words are quite long, such as Amplifier or Dielectric, but no more so than elephant, crocodile or xylophone, and so they seem completely acceptable for an ABC book.

Chris Ferrie and Sarah Kaiser have chosen a wide variety of concepts from the field of engineering to illustrate the letters, words such as Carnot Engine, Hydraulics, Keystone and Nonotube. R could have been for “Resistor”, but they have used some other electricity words, such as Amplifier and Battery in the book, and so it seems they chose “Requirements” which allows them to bring in the entire planning aspect of engineering. And the hardest letter, X, is used for Xenon, a nice choice that incorporates some chemistry. Both the very brief definition of the word and the longer description are written clearly and are of an appropriate length although the reader could always elaborate if they know more about the topic.

Chris Ferrie’s illustrations are simple and understandable for the word used. For example Viscosity is shown by two liquids of different colours, one flowing in a thin stream like water and the other in a thick stream like honey, the examples used in the text. Another example is that Xenon is used to make flashes, and a camera with a flash is shown on the page.

Board books are usually considered to be for very young children as their firm pages are easier for small hands to handle. ABC books are also for young children as this is an important stage in learning how to read. It is really great that now parents can have both ABC books with apples and bears and others with amplifiers and batteries. You never know what topic will be of interest to a child although you do know what topics interest you as the one doing the reading. There have never been so many choices for science books, so why not start young and keep going? ABCs of Engineering is a terrific book; read it often and to kids of many ages.