Nature All Around: Plants
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Nature All Around: Plants
Plants Up Close
Have you ever noticed that some plants have flowers and others don’t? Those without flowers, such as ferns and mosses, are nonflowering plants. They reproduce using spores, single cells that subdivide, instead of seeds. This book looks at plants with flowers, or flowering plants, which include most of the plants you see around you. All flowering plants have four basic parts.
LEAVES use water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide from the air to make food for the plant.
The STEM supports the plant and contains tiny tubes that carry water and food to all parts of the plant.
FLOWERS produce seeds that will grow into new plants.
ROOTS suck up water and minerals from soil.
Plant Protection
Plants have natural defenses to discourage plant eaters. These defenses may keep people away, too.
You can see some plant defenses such as the prickles on thistles and the thorns on wild roses, but other defenses are harder to spot. Stinging nettles have tiny, needlelike hairs on their leaves. The hairs are filled with a liquid that stings when it gets on your skin. If you’ve been stung, you will quickly learn to recognize nettles and stay away.
Poison ivy is another plant to avoid. This woody vine or shrub grows in woodlands and along fences in the country. Look for its three leaflets and, in the fall, its white berries. The plant sap causes a very itchy rash on your skin, so don’t touch! Remember the rhyme: “Leaves of three, let it be. Berries white, take flight.”
Pamela Hickman and Carolyn Gavin have created another installment in the “Nature All Around” series. Nature All Around: Plants is a nonfiction book that educates readers about primarily flowering plants, with additional tidbits of other information thrown in. This book has been divided into 14 chapters, each two pages long, that focus on different plant topics such as what happens to plants in each of the different seasons, different growing zones and plant habitats, and even some strange and endangered plants. Nature All Around: Plants also contains the traditional nonfiction text features, like a table of contents, headings, glossary, index, sidebars, captions, labelled diagrams, maps, and quasi-infographics. Most of the chapters have a written paragraph or two of information that is directly related to the chapter title or heading, mixed in with other random facts or information about specific plants that fall into the same category.
There are many wonderful features to Nature All Around: Plants. Readers of Hickman and Gavin’s book will enjoy the complex information pared down into bite-sized packages which allow readers to very quickly reread information or go back and double-check something that they’ve forgotten (which is apt to happen as much of the information is likely to be new to readers, unless they are well-versed with plants!) Plant-lovers will also enjoy the variety that Hickman and Gavin have chosen to showcase; the featured plants have some well-known varieties (like Marigold or Petunia), but they also have many species that readers may not be as familiar with, such as Trillium, Pasqueflower, and Sweet Rocket. Even with all these positive informational pieces, one of the highlights of this book is the gorgeous and vibrant accompanying artwork. Gavin’s timeless and beautiful paintings will entice young and old alike and are a welcome deviation from photography which can become dated as years pass.
While an all-around solid and worthwhile book, Nature All Around: Plants missed the mark in a couple of areas. A chapter dedicated to flowering plants as traditional medicines would have been a much-welcomed addition and lent a unique cultural aspect to readers, allowing them to connect and learn in additional ways. Based on the language used, vocabulary, and technical aspects explored where plants are concerned, this resource is probably best suited to grade four readers and up. Students learn about plants at a younger age while in school, and this book would not be as independently accessible to these learners, thereby leaving the book’s remaining audience as being older readers who are already interested in plants and want to learn more. The other section that could have been expanded on is the ‘Beginner Plant-Watching’ chapter. While I appreciate wanting to keep chapters to the two-page limit as in the rest of the book, it seems that the guide to plant watching could have better descriptions for identification, or more examples of petals/leaves/structure that fall into each of these categories.
Saskatchewan’s Dawn Opheim is an avid reader with a Masters Degree in Teacher-Librarianship and a Bachelors Degree in Education.