matter

Touch It!: Materials, Matter and You (Primary Physical Science)
$5.95
Developed with the cooperation of a science consultant, these books are a tool to teach the physical sciences to young children. Move It! and Touch It! follow science curricula in the largest American states. Each book is loaded with surprising facts and hands-on activities designed to hold young readers' interest and tap into their fascination with the everyday world. Touch It! explores materials -- their color, shape, texture, size, mass, magnetism and more.

Matter
$14.99
I'm not going to summerize the plot; there've been many good descriptions. What got me full of trepidation was criticisms about pacing and how at the end everything was rushed to an unsatisfactory conclusion, as if the author was tired of his creation.

Well I just finished it and it's one of Banks' best works, I think. Yeah; it picks up and MOVES near the end and perfectly so, it narrows like the point of the spear: action is all. And why not? We'd gotten all the background, description, philosophy, diplomacy, court intrigue etc., all of which tend to slow down the narrative flow and all of which is vital.

But there came a point when action is all that's required and it's handled quite excitingly and beautifully. I say beautifully because the preceding 500 pages which built up to the ending had the heft to enable me over the next several days after I finished the novel to reflect upon it, its universe, its characters, so full of context. Breathtaking; reminds me of Look To Windward, for my money the other masterpiece in the Culture series.

What Is Matter? (Rookie Read-About Science)
$4.95
This book did not meet expectations. I thought the text was clear enough, but the photographs are all set at a baseball game and are therefore confusing. There are no labels on the photos to help guide understanding. A kindergarten/preschool emergent reader would not be able to pick up this book and have any idea that it's about matter unless the book had been read multiple times.

Basher Physics: Why Matter Matters!
$8.99
Amazing. Fantastic. My 6 and 8 year old love this book. I bought it because my sister (their aunt) has a Ph.D in physics and I wanted a kids book that explained some of the concept of what she does. What surprised me is the elegance and creativity of the illustrations and the writing. It is not something you see often in kids books. I found the words stayed with me and the kids. The kids would refer to the "friends" and could tell me about the different concepts days later. Definitely get it if you have kids curious about the world and you want to give them broad awareness of how the universe works.