How to Choose Substitute Living Science Books

Anyone who uses a Charlotte Mason education knows the importance of using good books. But what do you do when one of those books goes out of print? We want to talk today especially about finding substitute books for science. Joining me today is my friend and coworker, Karen Smith.

Sonya: Karen, books going out of print. What’s up with this? (laughs)

Karen: For science books, it seems like they do not stay in print very long at all.

Sonya: Yeah, just a year or two and then they go out.

Karen: Yes, and you think that you have one, and it’s going to be a great one, and as soon as you schedule it, it’s gone. It’s hard to keep up with those living science books being in print.

Sonya: Sometimes you can find them in a local library. Even if you can’t buy it new, you can find it used or at the library, but if you cannot find it anymore, what do you do? Skip that topic?

Karen: Oh no, don’t skip the topic. (laughs) There are several things that you can do. If you can’t find it at your library, or on a used book site, you can look online; check archive.org. They sometimes have them where you can borrow them digitally. So that’s a good source there. If you can’t find it there, now you are going to have to do some digging.

Sonya: And we’re looking for another living book on the same topic. Does it have to be at the same age level?

Karen: Not necessarily. Sometimes you can go down, or maybe even up, a level if you have grades one through three. You might need to go up a level to find a book. If you have older students, you might consider going down to even books that are at the fourth- through sixth-grade level. They contain a lot of information, and they’re not 500-page tomes that are just dry facts and are boring. You want to find that sweet spot of having enough information but being enjoyable to read.

Sonya: Now just as a clarification, then, when you’re talking about an upper level—like if you have a high school student—you don’t want to give them all fourth- through sixth-grade books, right?

Karen: No. No. You’ll want to find some that are within their own grade range also, if you can.

Sonya: But just to earn that science credit, you’re not going to be using all picture books.

Karen: Particularly if you are designing your own high school science course, like maybe something on botany or astronomy, there’s some wiggle room. We can put it that way.

Sonya: Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. Now I know that there’s also a fabulous resource that you have created. Spill the beans on this one. Tell everybody where to find this.

Karen: We have a living science book list on our website and that is a good source for finding some substitutes, because those have all been pre-screened by me as being living books. So that’s a good source to go to if you can’t find a book on, let’s say, ducks; the one that’s scheduled, you can’t find that one. You can go to our living science book list and see if there’s another book that you can get that’s listed there.

Sonya: You put a lot of hours into that. That’s such a valuable resource and that’s delineated by grade level, correct?

Karen: Grade level and topic.

Sonya: So they should be able to find some in there. Let’s talk for a minute about what to look for in a substitute book. What do you look for?  When you created that list, what was your criteria for what’s going to go on that list? And what did you pitch? I assume your pile of what you pitched was much bigger than your pile of what you recommended.

Karen: Yes. That’s the way it always goes.

Sonya: So many that you wade through. It’s like, “Nope, nope, nope, oh, found the gem!” What is it about the gem?

Karen: The gem is one that when you read it, your imagination can picture what is being written about. But there are also enough facts that it’s not just a little touch here and there. It’s not mostly a story and then just a few facts, but the facts are woven in in such a way that you are learning so much as you read. I don’t know how else to describe that.

Sonya: Well, let’s give an example, okay? We found a couple of books here, and as we were talking before, it’s easy for people to think with a living book that it either is or it isn’t. And that’s not always the case.

Karen: Not always.

Sonya: A lot of times, with living books, there is a spectrum there. We need to rate it on a scale. Is it only dry facts? That’s your zero point on the scale. Or is it firing in my imagination all over the place with all these ideas? That’s a 10 on the scale. But some books might be a 5. And are there any times when we have to use a 5?

Karen: There are times when you might have to use something lower than a 5. Particularly for science books, there are topics in science that it’s very, very hard to find a living book for that topic. But you know you need to cover it.

Sonya: Give me an example.

Karen: Rocks. It is very hard to find a narrative telling of the properties of rocks and the different kinds that are out there. And so choose the best that you can find. That’s key. If you have a choice between a field guide and another book that will give more details, choose the other book. Because the field guide is going to be very short, these-are-the-facts type thing. Field guides are good. They have their purpose. But if that’s what you’re using to find out your information on the rock cycle and different types of rocks, granite and that sort of thing, it’s probably not your best.

Sonya: All right, so let’s read these examples that we found. And I hope the listeners will rate them on a scale of dry facts versus living ideas, firing your imagination, and touching your emotion potentially. How well can you imagine; how well can you see what is being described? That’s going to be key. We’re going to read about the water cycle. I will read from my book first. This is basically a book of experiments. It’s a Reader’s Digest book called How Science Works by Judith Hahn. And it has little excerpts in it, little vignettes of different topics.

Here is a paragraph on the water cycle:

“However much water we consume, the total amount of water in the world never changes. This is because virtually all the world’s water is in the oceans, locked up in the polar ice sheets, or involved in the continuous cycle called the hydrological cycle, which is forever circulating water between the sea and the sky. We get most of our water by tapping into this cycle. When your shower or bath water runs away, it eventually ends up in rivers, lakes or the sea. From here, it evaporates in the heat of the sun to fill the lower layers of the atmosphere with invisible water vapor. A little of this vapor may be carried aloft by rising air currents until it cools enough to condense into clouds of water droplets and ice. Once these grow large enough, they fall as rain and snow back to the earth’s surface, where some runs down to the sea in rivers and lakes. Some is trapped to fill reservoirs and supply taps, so the cycle begins again.”

I could picture some of it when they’re talking about your shower or bath water. That was mainly it. So that’s just a paragraph about the water cycle in this book. Now you have an example from a book that you recommend, actually.

Karen: Yes, in our science course, Exploring What God Has Made, for grades four through six. Any child in those grades can use that course. This book has a little bit about the water cycle, but it has bits about different properties of water, too. Things like surface tension and the droplets and things like that. But I will read about the water cycle from this book.

Sonya: Can you give the title of the book for our listeners?

Karen: A Drop of Water by Walter Wick.

Sonya: Okay, read to me about the water cycle.

Karen: “The sun’s heat and the earth’s gravity keep water in constant motion. Water evaporates from puddles, ponds, lakes, and oceans, from plants and trees, and even from your skin. Water vapor moves invisibly through the air, but it is always ready to condense on a cool blade of grass or the surface of a pond. Massive clouds form as vapor condenses on tiny particles of dust in the air. Then, and only then, can water fall from the sky as rain, replenishing lakes, rivers, and oceans.Hard to predict, impossible to control, water cycles around the earth. And water is precious. Without it not a single living thing could survive. No plants would grow, not even one blade of grass. No animals would roam the earth, not even a spider. But somewhere in the world right now, snow drifts on a mountaintop and rain falls in a valley. And all around us we are reminded of the never-ending journey of a drop of water.”

Sonya: Okay, that was firing up a whole lot of images in my imagination. 

Karen: Even that it evaporates from your skin. I mean, you picture your skin and think about your sweat evaporating off your skin.

Sonya: And even the use of words “then and only then,” will it drop as water, will it fall as rain, that made me perk up and take notice, it’s like, oh, it’s got to have that particle of dust. Then and only then will it become rain. And so there are a lot of great ideas in that passage. I would rate that particular paragraph as an 8 or a 9. And the one I read, I might give it a 4.

Karen: Maybe a 5.

Sonya: Maybe, maybe.

Karen: But the ideas contained here, you can hear all the things about the water cycle in there. Without just the straight telling of the water cycle.

Sonya: Now, in this case and even in the rock case, alright, where we might not be able to find a good living book, talk a little bit about how nature study can compensate, if you will, or at least supplement and help that situation.

Karen: Science and nature study go hand in hand. What you read for science is your child learning about the different topics of science, everything that they can through written material, sometimes videos. When they go out into nature, now they are making their own personal connections with the things that they have learned. Obviously, there are things that we learn about that we’re not going to be able to make personal connections with. For example, we live in the United States; we’re not going to be able to make personal connections with something that we read about in Africa. But we can still learn about nature in Africa. Maybe someday we’ll go there and we can make a personal connection. But overall, most of your personal connections are going to be made in your location. It’s that coupling of personal connections with what they read. And the personal connections are what really make science come alive for students. Let’s give an example; you’ve recently put a bird feeder out. And the personal connections that you make with the birds now are different than what you had when you just read about them.

Sonya: Astronomically different. Absolutely, because we’re watching their habits, and we’re getting emotionally involved with these little critters that come to our feeder, and when they’re going to come. “Aren’t they going to show up today?” And yeah, absolutely. 

Karen: But that connection, now when you read about birds, you have a personal connection to that. So you’re paying attention to what you’re reading more than what you would have if you didn’t have that personal connection.

Sonya: So the two feed off of each other, if you will. The living science book informs your mind and fires your imagination so that when you see it in person, you have a little more background to it. You recognize it. Like when you see a puddle, as we read about in A Drop of Water, potentially you think about that cycle of water and what part the puddle plays. So your science has informed your nature study. But then also, what you’re seeing in nature and what you are observing creates a curiosity to learn more. That then feeds back into reading more about it in your science lessons. Hey, we’ve got our own little cycle going here, too. There we go. A science cycle.

Karen: I have one more tip for finding those living science books. If you have to get a substitute, look at the narration prompts, particularly in Discovering What God Has Made and Exploring What God Has Made, those two science courses that are our newest ones; they have narration prompts for the different books that are in there. If you look at those narration prompts, you know what material needs to be covered in a substitute book.

Sonya: Oh, that’s a great tip. Because you’re never sure. It’s like, but what if this one doesn’t cover everything that needs to be covered?

Karen: But look at the prompts because that’s your clue as to what the material, whatever substitute book you find, needs to have in it.

Sonya: Good to know. And as you said before, if you cannot find the perfect substitute living science book, don’t skip the topic.

Karen: No. 

Sonya: You find the best you can. 

Karen: And that’s okay. Sometimes the best we can find is what there is, and our children will still learn from that. It might just not stick as well as a living science book.

Sonya: It’s going to be harder to narrate too, I would think. 

Karen: They will be harder to narrate, because it’s hard to narrate just the facts.

Sonya: So we need to take that into consideration when we’re asking them to narrate from that book. But at least they will have something, and then above all, try and get them into nature study so they can make a personal connection with whatever it is that you had to substitute the book for. That’s great. Thanks so much for your help with this, Karen.

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