Wanda's Better Way

by Laura Pedersen, Penny Weber (Illustrator)

Overview

Young Wanda is a girl on a mission; she wants to decide what to do when she grows up. Will she be a dancer? A landscape designer? Maybe a pastry chef? Her teachers and parents all make suggestions, but Wanda sets out to explore each option on her own. Along the way she invents a clever pulley system, a squirrel-proof bird feeder, and the best way to separate eggs. With the school career fair (and adulthood) looming on the horizon, what will Wanda decide? From the award-winning children’s author Laura Pedersen comes Wanda’s Better Way, an educational picture book about believing in yourself and pursuing your passion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781682750148
Publisher:	Fulcrum Publishing
Publication date:	11/01/2017
Pages:	36
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	5 - 7 Years

About the Author

Laura Pedersen is an author and playwright. A former New York Times columnist, Laura has written over a dozen books for adults and children, including Unplugged, Ava's Adventure, and Life in New York: How I Learned to Love Squeegee Men, Token Suckers, Trash Twisters, and Subway Sharks. Unplugged won a Mom’s Choice Gold Award, a Moonbeam Children’s Book Bronze Award for best picture book, and a Skipping Stones Honor Award. Laura has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, The Today Show, Primetime, and The Late Show with David Letterman. Connect with her at www.LauraPedersenBooks.com. Penny Weber lives in Holbrook on Long Island, New York. Since attending the School of Visual Arts 20 years ago, she has worked as a muralist, greeting card artist and most recently as an illustrator for the children’s market. Penny’s work can be found in many books for children as well as educational projects, including Unplugged: Ella Gets Her Family Back, Chris P. Bacon: My Life So Far..., and Ava's Adventure. Penny has a husband, three children, a very large cat, and she is heavily lobbying for a puppy. Connect with her at pennyweberart.com.

Editorial Reviews

"Bright encouragement for young scientists and makers." —Kirkus Reviews


"With short, easy to read and understand sentences and realistic illustrations, Wanda’s Better Way is a nice way to introduce STEM concepts and the scientific method to younger budding scientists and readers." —Rosemary Kiladitis, momreadit.wordpress.com


"The examples along with the methods should provide great inspiration for young readers to try solving their own problems." —Cindy Hudson, motherdaughterbookclub.com

From the Publisher

2017-06-05
A child discovers that she has a special gift for spotting and solving engineering problems. In her realistic illustrations, Weber emphasizes close-ups of the young inventor's mobile expressions—and light bulbs going off overhead as she visits in turn each member of her mixed-race family. Light-skinned Wanda has no interest in joining her darker brother's dance class, but inspiration strikes when she sees how cluttered the dressing room is, and she strings a clothesline that neatly gets all the loose clothing off the floor. Likewise, an aversion to bugs derails a mild wish to be a landscape designer like her mom, a black woman with hair in partial cornrows, but she concocts an effective squirrel barrier for a bird feeder with a disposable aluminum pan. She then joins her white dad in the kitchen and, after failing to separate egg yolks and whites by hand, thinks up a faster way that she later leverages into a science-fair project. Wanda's technique of using a squeeze bottle to create a partial vacuum is feasible though not described (or very clearly depicted), but for budding experimenters eager to tackle this or other "problems" Pedersen concludes with a summary version of the scientific method. Bright encouragement for young scientists and makers. (Picture book. 6-8)

Kirkus Reviews