JUST THE RIGHT SIZE- WHY BIG ANIMALS ARE BIG AND LITTLE ANIMALS ARE LITTLE by NICOLA DAVIES

I love when people who know a lot about a topic can make the information interesting and understandable to someone who is not an expert in their field. That's exactly what happens in JUST THE RIGHT SIZE: WHY BIG ANIMALS ARE BIG AND LITTLE ANIMALS ARE LITTLE. Author and zoologist Nicola Davies draws on her considerable expertise as a zoologist to help kids understand some pretty complex information about animal evolution and physiology. Davies begins by explaining the BTLT (Big Thing, Little Thing) Rule (which would be terrific to link to intermediate grade math or science lessons on surface area and volume):

If you DOUBLE the length of something,
the surface area and cross section
go up FOUR TIMES,
while its volume and weight
go up EIGHT TIMES.

Davies then explains, in 1-2 page spreads, how this rule impacts any number of aspects of human and animal physiology, e.g. why people can't fly, why animals can only be "so big," how the surface area of the gills and the intestines are increase the efficiency of the respiratory and digestive systems, how size impacts travel, etc. Each of these topics, and lots of others, are complicated, but Davies explains them in a way that is friendly, and understandable, and humorous. And there are tons of fun-to-know facts embedded throughout, e.g. "If you spread out the skin that makes up the air sacs in your lungs, it would cover most of a tennis court" OR "Gibbons used to be large, tree-climbing apes, more like chimps, but when they started to get around in the forest by swinging from tree to tree, having a nice, light body was convenient…now they are the lightest ape, the size of a fat domestic cat."

Kids (and adults) will also love Neal Layton's humorous, cartoon- style illustrations. They're funny, but also packed with tons of information that complement the text. The illustrations will be great "mentor texts" for my fourth and fifth graders, who already know quite a bit about diagrams, and need to stretch themselves a little. I think it would be fun for them to choose three or four significant facts, then try to embed those some how in their illustrations.

This probably is not a book for most little guys, but I think third, fourth, and fifth graders would really enjoy it. I could even see reading it aloud to my son's high school biology class…