The spark in me

K-Gr 5--A young narrator with brown skin and long braids is full of questions and wants answers: "if the galaxy is packed with stars, why is it so dark?" and "if water is transparent, why is snow white?" When the unnamed narrator shares these questions with classmates, the teacher says that all of these questions can be answered by physics. Readers see the narrator journaling in a spiral notebook and get to peek inside to see what the answers to these questions are. While the concept of a child asking seemingly unanswerable questions is not unique, what the author does well is to plant the seed with readers that nothing is truly unanswerable with science. This book is an endorsement for readers to take a look around, question the world around them, and seek knowledge wherever they go. Whimsical illustrations rendered in ink and watercolor pose a great contrast to the ending glimpse of the notebook; it appears to use handwriting in black and white. VERDICT A great introduction to the wonderful world of science, this book can be used across many grade levels.--Katherine Kefi

A child abuzz with questions about the natural world finds essential tools for addressing them. Gifted with a free-floating imagination, the young narrator--who's depicted with brown skin and multiple long, tight braids--wonders why the starlit night sky is dark, why snow is white even though water is transparent, if it might be possible to walk on the ceiling or sail the seas in a paper boat, and other common conundrums. A teacher's suggestion that a visit to the library might help answer those questions leads (as it would) to the life-altering revelation that "there's a name for the spark I feel inside. It's called physics!" And then, as Tanco's depictions of the child's airy visions and ingenious inventions suddenly switch to images of research notebook pages with simple line drawings, so, too, does the narrative turn to basic science notes: on gravity, light absorption and reflection, Archimedes' principle, and other fundamentals certain to be helpful to young readers prone to generating similar queries and visions of their own. The child's supportive parents and sibs are likewise brown-skinned; students in a classroom scene are racially diverse. An inventive way to link posing questions with looking for answers.(Informational picture book. 7-9) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.