Life In Hot Water by Mary Batten

This picture book explores the fascinating and unique world that exists around thermal vents found in the world's ocean trenches.

At the bottom of the oceans lie the most extreme environments on Earth: hydrothermal vents that gush water hot enough to melt lead! Uncovering this world has been a grand adventure.

Hydrothermal vents were predicted to exist in the deep ocean by geologists. In an attempt to locate these vents, the National Science Foundation funded several ocean expeditions during the early 1970's. Remotely operated vehicles called ROVs were used. Through the use of deep-sea cameras and temperature sensors, the mid-ocean ridge near the Galapagos Islands was identified as a potential location for the vents. A rise in temperature had been recorded close to the seafloor in water that should be freezing.

A pilot and two scientists discovered the cause of this temperature rise on the morning of February 17, 1977 when they descended into the deep in a deep-diving HOV (human-occupied vehicle) called Alvin. They were part of the  Galapagos Hydrothermal Expedition which was searching for the cause of the temperature rise. Alvin descended a mile and a half below the surface of the Pacific Ocean to total darkness on the ocean floor. When they turned on the lights they saw "jets of  hot, dark-coloured liquid exploding upward like geysers..." Even more incredible and completely unexpected were the living creatures they saw living on the rocks around the hydrothermal vents. This was the beginning of many remarkable discoveries that would be made around these vents in the coming years.

Discussion

In Life In Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean, author Mary Batten describes the incredible ecosystem that scientists have discovered existing around the hydrothermal vents that form along the mid-ocean ridge. Invisible to humans until technology was developed to enable scientists to explore the deepest regions of the oceans.

Batten takes her readers first to the discovery of the hydrothermal vents and then describes how they are formed along the mid-ocean ridges. As the tectonic plates move, volcanoes erupt along the mid-ocean ridges, opening more fissures in the Earth's crust. The cold seawater seeps into these fissures it is heated to high temperatures by magma. This causes the seawater to react with the minerals in the surrounding rocks, causing a plume of mineral and chemical rich water. Scientists discovered two types of hydrothermal vents which they named black smokers and white smokers, based on the colour of their plumes and their unique chemical composition. 

Even more intriguing and very unexpected was the unique life forms that the expeditions discovered living around the hydrothermal vents. These life forms were discovered to use chemosynthesis, a  process animals use to produce the energy needed to survive, that was previously unknown. Batten details the remarkable creatures who have adapted in the most unusual ways to live in this extreme environment. The "iron snail", the Hoff crabs, the Pompeii worms, and the vent octopus are just a few of the vent animals who have changed the way scientists think about life.

The fascinating science information presented in Life In Hot Water is accompanied by the beautiful artwork by illustrator Thomas Gonzalez. Rendered in pastel, coloured pencils and airbrush, Gonzalez has captured the mysterious environment of the deep ocean with a palette of black, blues, greys and whites.

There is a summary of important facts covered in the book, and an Author's Note as well as a Glossary and a Selected Bibliography for further reading. This informative and well done picture book is highly recommended for budding scientists of all ages.

Book Details:

Life In Hot Water. Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean by Mary Batten
Atlanta: Peachtree Publishing Company Inc.     2021

Journey Around The Sun: the Story of Halley's Comet by James Gladstone

Journey Around the Sun  tells the story of Halley's Comet from the point of view of the comet.The comet states that it has seen our past and will see our future. In the past, people looked at the comet in wonder, questioning what it was. Aristotle, a famous Greek philosopher, believed it was formed from super hot gases. In the city of Cairo in 898, the comet was called a planet with a tail and was seen for twenty-two days.

The comet notes that it has been given many names: a hairy star by the medieval English monk Eadwine in 1145, a bushy star by Chinese astronomers in 374, and a great sword of flame by the Flemish astronomer Gottfried Wendelin in 1607.

The comet, so often throughout history has been part of drawings and paintings.It notes that it has often been seen as a harbinger of misfortune but it says, "...I am only a comet, neither good nor bad -- a part of nature." 

No one knew that each sighting was of the same comet until Edmond Halley in 1758. Once this was known, people began to watch for the comet and it noted that in the twentieth century, scientists began to take photographs using telescopes. The Giotto probe came within 370 miles of the comet in 1986.

Now the comet is traveling far from the sun but it hopes that those reading this picture book will watch out for it in the future!

Discussion

Journey Around the Sun is a richly illustrated account of Halley's comet, a short period comet that is visible from Earth every seventy-five to seventy-six years. It was Edmond Halley's observations that led him to determine that previous sightings were of the same object. Halley was able to determine that comets seen in 1531, 1607 and 1682 were the same comet and he predicted the comet would return in 1758. Halley didn't live to see its return but it's reappearance was confirmed by Johann Pulitzch on Christmas night in 1758!

Gladstone has crafted an informative picture book that is written from a unique perspective, that of the comet. From this point of view, Gladstone is able to highlight the many changes the comet might have witnessed over many thousands of years, as it journeys past Earth every seventy-five years or so. The narrative also offers readers many interesting facts about Halley's Comet, including various attempts through the centuries to study it. Accompanying this informative text is the beautiful artwork of illustrator Yaara Eshet. Her colourful illustrations bring alive the comet and it's history in a very real way.

James Gladstone indicates in his A Note from the Author that he was able to view Halley's Comet when he was a teenager in 1986 but will only see it again if he lives to be very old. A unique presentation on an interesting natural feature of our amazing universe!

Book Details:

Journey Around The Sun: the Story of Halley's Comet by James Gladstone
Toronto: Owlkids Books    2021

All In A Drop by Lori Alexander

Antony van Leeuwenhoek lives in the town of Delft, Netherlands. It is a place of tree-lined canals and busy merchants. Antony lives at a time which comes to be known as the Golden Age for the Netherlands. The Dutch own the largest fleet of ships  in the world and travel to many countries bringing in many goods from Africa, North America and Asia.

Antony's family are tradesmen: his grandfather was a beer brewer and his father makes wicker baskets used to transport fragile goods on the ships.

Antony's father dies when is he is quite young. With his mother's remarriage, he is sent, at the age of only eight to a boarding school outside of Delft.

At the age of fourteen, his schooling now finished, Antony moves to Benthuizen to live with his uncle. He sends Antony to Amsterdam to train in a linen's merchant's shop. In Amsterdam, Antony meets people from different countries and cultures.

For six years, Antony works as an apprentice to a linen merchant. Finally ready to start his own business, he moves back to Delft in 1654. He is only twenty-two years old and is now a draper, a person who sells cloth.

To check the quality of the cloth he sells, Antony uses a magnifying glass that helps him to see the number of threads in a swatch of cloth.

In 1668, a trip to London, England for vacation changes the course of Antony's life. While in London, he learns about the work of Robert Hooke, an English scientist who uses a microscope to view objects very closely. Hooke has written a book called Micrographia about what he's seen through his microscope. Although Antony cannot read Hooke's book because it's written in English, the pictures intrigue him.

When Antony returns home to the Netherlands, he decides to build his own microscope. This microscope is different from Hooke's. It has a pea-size lens held between two small brass rectangles and a screw mount to hold a specimen. His first subject is a bit of moldy bread. But what Antony sees is more detailed than the picture in Robert Hooke's Micrographia.

After viewing many different specimens through his microscopes, (each specimen is mounted on its own microscope), Antony decides to show his work to a friend, Reinier de Graaf, a scientist who encourages him to share his findings with the Royal Society in London. At first scientists are skeptical because Antony is unknown to them but they find his observations interesting and they request that he write them each time makes a new observation.

This is thrilling for Antony and he begins his work in earnest, hiring a local artist to draw what he sees in each of his microscopes. But Antony's most famous discovery is yet to come. It is one that one hundred years after his death would lead scientists to make important discoveries about disease.

Discussion

All In A Drop chronicles the important work of Antony van Leeuwenhoek, now considered the Father of Microbiology. Written in third person, Alexander brings to life Antony's efforts to learn about the hidden world that surrounds all of us. His work with what was a relatively new instrument called the microscope demonstrated that an  invisible and unknown world hidden from human eyes existed. This  microscopic was difficult for scientists living in Antony's era to fully comprehend.

 In the chapter, The Father of Microbiology, Alexander considers how Antony's discovery of hidden organisms was to eventually play an important role in medicine. Unfortunately, few scientists in Antony's time, including Antony himself failed to recognize just how important this hidden world of microbes was to the health of mankind. It would be one hundred years before the connection between microbes and disease would be made, allowing doctors to save millions of lives. This delay Alexander believes was likely partly the fault of Antony who worked alone, had no rigorous scientific training, and kept his methods a secret. He never passed on his knowledge through lectures or teaching, although his letters were published in the oldest scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions. Nevertheless, as Alexander writes, "...the work Antony did with microscopes forever changed the way we see the world around us."

Alexander's third person narrative is straightforward, easy to follow and enhanced by the illustrations of Vivien Mildenberger which were rendered in pastels, watercolours and coloured pencil. Included are relevant photographs, a Timeline of Events, a Glossary, an Author's Note which explains the importance of Antony van Leeuwenhoek's work, Source Notes and a Selected Bibliography for further reading. This short chapter book is also indexed. A great introduction to microbiology for young readers.


Book Details:

All In A Drop: How Antony van Leeuwenhoek Discovered an Invisible World by Lori Alexander
New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company    2019
93 pp.


Image credit: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antonie-van-Leeuwenhoek/images-videos#/media/1/334699/12567

The Third Mushroom by Jennifer Holm

The Third Mushroom is the sequel to The Fourteenth Goldfish, and continues the story of Ellie and her grandfather Dr. Melvin Sagarsky. In the first novel, Ellie's seventy-seven-year-old grandfather had discovered a way to reverse the aging process, turning himself into a thirteen-year-old teenager. Unable to continue working at his lab, he lands at the home of his granddaughter Ellie, who lives with her divorced mother, a drama teacher. For the past year Melvin has been travelling via bus, across the country. However, one day after school, Ellie comes home to find a stranger in their house. Not knowing who is in the house, she calls 911. That stranger turns out to be her grandfather who has unexpectedly returned home.

Melvin, now fourteen, is his usual cantankerous, belligerent self, a typical teenage boy eating enormous quantities of food and producing large amounts of smelly, dirty laundry. While Melvin is much the same, things have changed in Ellie's life. In the past year, Ellie's mother has remarried to Ben, a video game designer. He doesn't know that Melvin is actually Ellie's grandfather. Instead, he's been told Melvin is her nephew. Melvin's sudden re-appearance isn't a problem as Ben is away on a trip to India.

With his return, Melvin must register to attend school, a prospect that he's not happy about, especially after he's placed back into the eighth grade. Depressed about his situation and missing his old lab from which he was forcibly removed when he grew younger, Ellie suggests that maybe they should work together on her science project. Working on the science project means Melvin will have the opportunity to work in the school's new refurbished lab, something that thrills him.

Retrieving Melvin's "specimen" from their home freezer, Ellie and Melvin take it to lab to examine. They discover it is not a jellyfish. Melvin tells Ellie that the specimen an axolatl, a salamander that has gills and lives underwater. Melvin tells her that the axolatl has the ability to regenerate missing body parts. Their axolatl is unusual in that it has six legs instead of the usual four.

Melvin is not sure why their axolatl has six legs; this could be due to genetic variation or the influence of the environment. Ellie suggests that their science project might be to determine if the extra legs are due to environmental variation by using the axolotl as food. Melvin agrees that this is a good idea for their experiment, so they purchase fruit flies from the pet store and mix their own fruit fly media to breed them.

As Ellie and her grandfather work on their experiment, they must both contend with unexpected events in their lives, take chances and cope with loss.

Discussion

The Third Mushroom is a delightful sequel, continuing all the charm of The Fourteenth Goldfish while serving up a mixture of equally funny and sad moments. Holm continues to capture Melvin's sarcastic wit, along with Ellie's realistic middle-grade wisdom.

Axolatl

The Third Mushroom tackles several different themes including death and the grieving process, aging and the meaning of friendship. In this novel, Ellie learns about how her grandmother's death from pancreatic cancer deeply affected her grandfather. Melvin tells her in response to her question as to why he never dated again, "...I was destroyed when your grandmother died. You can't imagine what it was like to watch her waste away from the cancer. Two PhDs and a lifetime dedicated to science and I still couldn't stop a few malignant cells! I would have done anything to save her..." Eventually when Melvin begins to age again, he reconsiders after Ellie points out that perhaps the woman he's interested in - the school librarian,  might be a rare chance in life.

Ellie too must come to terms with her own loss, that of her beloved cat Jonas who dies after being hit by a car. As Ellie and her grandfather consider treating Jonas with the axolotl, Ellie must consider whether treating him is the right thing to do. "Should we try -- and maybe cause Jonas pain -- in the hope that he'll live? Or do we just let Jonas live out his last days and then let him die? I suddenly understand better what my grandfather and mother went through with my grandmother, because these are impossible choices..."

Holm, the daughter of two medical professionals, manages to incorporate many science facts into her story in a way that fits with the storyline line and makes her novel more interesting, especially to young readers with an interest in science. Through the character of Melvin Sagarsky, Holm is able to inform her readers about several scientists who made groundbreaking discoveries, how the scientific method is important, and how critical thinking in science can be applied to her everyday life. For example, readers will learn about several famous scientists and their discoveries: Sir Alexander Fleming who discovered penicillin, William and Caroline  Herschel, brother and sister astronomers who respectively discovered comets and made telescopes, James Carroll and Jesse Lazear who confirmed that yellow fever was spread by mosquitoes and Antoine van Leeuwenhoek, who developed the first usable microscope.

Ellie is impatient for their experiment to show results, but Melvin explains that this isn't the way science works. Melvin asks Ellie to consider what her hypothesis is for the experiment, and what their data shows to date. "The point of having a hypothesis is not to be right. It's about the data. Sometimes the data takes you in a direction you never imagined, and you have an interesting result." Melvin explains that "Good scientists learn from their data."   

Melvin even applies the scientific method to Ellie's life. In Ellie's life, her best friend Raj, who is tall and goth, asks her out on a date. Although they are best friends, Ellie has never considered Raj in this way, but when she goes to watch him at a chess tournament, she sees Raj in a different way. "He's focused and confident. He seems so much more than my potato chip-sharing friend. I remember what my grandfather said about looking at something a thousand times and then one day seeing something new."

When her date with Raj doesn't work out and their relationship tanks, Melvin encourages Ellie to look at both her hypothesis ("...we were perfect for each other) and her data (We were great at being friends!) and draw her conclusion. Melvin tells her "But failure is part of experimentation. It's okay to make mistakes....Your experiment failed but you learned something from it."

The title of the novel, The Third Mushroom is a reference to Ellie's third attempt at trying mushrooms which she hates. Ellie first tried mushrooms in ravioli and found they tasted like dirt. Her second experience at a Chinese restaurant they were rubbery and slimy. However, the third time Ellie has mushrooms is in lasagna made with Portobello mushrooms. They taste like chicken to her. From this Ellie learns that it is important to experiment in life a bit, to try new challenges before writing something off completely.

The Third Mushroom is a wonderful conclusion to the story of Ellie and her eccentric scientist-grandfather. The novel ends on an upbeat tone, Melvin is aging again and has moved out to live his own life, Ellie has a new cat, her relationship with her best friend Raj is restored, and she's working on becoming friends again with Brianna. This novel is well-written, funny, and offers young readers plenty to think about without getting too heavy.

Holm includes an Author's Note, Recommended Resources for Continuing the Conversation which lists some resources to explore famous scientists, and Mellie's Gallery of Scientists which feature short bios of the scientists mentioned in the novel. 

Book Details:

The Third Mushroom by Jennifer Holm
New York: Random House LLC     2018
217 pp.

DVD: Deepwater Horizon

Deepwater Horizon is a cinematic dramatization of the oil rig disaster that occurred on the night of April 20, 2010 in the Gulf Coast in which eleven workers were killed and seventeen injured.

The Deepwater Horizon rig was drilling an exploratory well in the Macondo Prospect, a potential oil and gas prospect in Miocene-age sediments located approximately forty-one miles offshore of Louisiana. Ironically, the prospect takes its name from the fictional town of Macondo in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Drilling in the prospect was initially begun in 2009 by Transocean's Marianas semi-submersible rig but was discontinued after the rig was damaged by Hurricane Ida i the fall. In February of 2010,  Deepwater Horizon, a dynamically positioned ultra deep-water semi-submersible rig resumed drilling the prospect. It is important to remember that Deepwater Horizon was to look for oil, not pump it out of the ground. In April of 2010, with the drilling operation forty-three days behind schedule, disaster struck. What followed was a serious of human and mechanical mistakes that led to the disaster.

When an oil well is drilled a bit is used to drill through the rock. Each section drilled has casing installed to line the hole and then cement is poured to seal the space between the casing and the rock wall. This process is repeated again and again as the well is drilled deeper using smaller casing. When drilling a well, heavy mud is pumped into the well to lubricate the bit and also to carry bits of rock (called chips) to the surface. The mud also has another function. Hydrocarbons - that is oil and gas in the rock formations are under tremendous pressure thousands of feet below the earth's surface. When an opening is created as when drilling, the oil and gas will flow out of the rock to the surface unless there is a countering force.That force is provided by the static pressure of the mud which keeps the gas and oil from flowing out of the rock, up the drill pipe to the surface. If the pressure exerted by the mud is not sufficient the well will "kick" that is gas and oil will flow upwards. The hydrocarbons can also flow upwards if the well has been damaged or if "the cement placed between the casing protecting the drill string and the rock wall of the well isn't tight." In this case methane gas can flow up the drill string or outside of the cement casing and flow upwards with catastrophic results.

Deepwater Horizon

Because BP was behind schedule, drilling proceeded too quickly and the well was fractured at around 13,000 feet. The pipe had to be pulled two thousand feet back, the damaged section sealed and drilling restarted along a slightly different angle into the oil/gas bearing formation. With the drilling now finished, to secure the final section of the well, BP decided to go cheap and use a single string of casing from the wellhead to the bottom of the well. This was risky because it meant that there would be a significant chance gas would leak out of the formation. (Generally single casing is used on shallower wells on land.) Even worse, BP did not use enough centralizers or collars that ensure the pipe is in the middle of the bore hole so that when the cement is poured around it there are no gaps and therefore no risk of gas leakage. Both of the options were used to cut time and cost. BP also did not have Schlumberger run a cement bond log, deciding it wasn't needed. This test is routine on a well to test the integrity of the cement bond between the well casing and the formation. The blowout preventer (BOP) which can be used to shut down a runaway well was also damaged making it useless. Added to this was the apparent misreading of the negative pressure test which is done on a well to determine the integrity of the well. All of these factors plus many more contributed to the making of the disaster..


The movie, directed by Peter Berg,  focuses on a few people in the disaster - Transocean's Chief Electronics technician Mike Williams played by Mark Wahlberg with Kate Hudson cast as his wife Felicity, Transocean's offshore installation manager  (OIM) Jimmy ("Mr. Jimmy") Harrell (Kurt Russell), Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez) who was a Dynamic Positioning Operator and Caleb Holloway (Dylan O'Brien) who was a drill crew floorhand. Also included were BP executives, nighttime rig supervisor Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich) and daytime rig operator Robert Kaluza. While the movie makes Vidrine out to be the villain in fact as indicated above, it was a smorgasbord of many failures, both human and mechanical that were involved in creating the disaster. 

While much media attention has been on the ecological disaster associated with the oil spill that followed, little focus has been on the real people who survived the disaster and the eleven rig workers who died that night. Berg wanted to create a movie about the human tragedy behind the disaster.  In an interview with the L.A. Times Berg stated: “To this day, when people think of Deepwater Horizon, they only think of an oil spill — they think of an oil spill and dead pelicans ...Obviously that oil spill was horrific,” he continued. “But the reality is 11 men died on that rig and these men were just doing their jobs and many of them worked hard trying to prevent that oil from blowing out and it was certainly not their fault. As it pertains to the families of those men who lost their lives, I want them to feel as though another side of that story was presented, so that whenever someone talks about the Deepwater Horizon or offshore oil drilling, people don’t automatically go to ‘oil spills.’ ”

To recreate the events, an 85% scale replica of the Deepwater Horizon rig was built on an abandoned lot in Louisiana and placed in a enormous water tank.The replica was made as accurately as possible and the set was one of the largest ever made for a movie. It was set on fire to mimic the real explosions and inferno of the disaster. The realism of the set made it possible to give viewers some idea of just how horrific things were on the rig during the blowout. A 2010 New York Times article written by David Barstow, David Rhode and Stephanie Saul became the main source for the development of the movie script.

From the very beginning, the movie adaptation portrays a culture of disorganization, risk taking and poor maintenance on the rig. When Mike Williams, Jimmy Harrell and Andrea Fleytas arrive on Deepwater Horizon they are astonished to learn that the Schlumberger team has been sent home without running the cement log. No one seems to know why the log was not run and they are told that the drilling is finished and they are going to cap the well.  Furthermore there are many things on the rig that do not work - the phone system is out, toilets are backed up etc. After his own brief investigation with rig staff, Mr. Jimmy decides to confront BP executives, Don Vidrine and Robert Kaluza about the cement log and while doing so, Williams reels off a list of items on the rig that don't work and are in need of repair.

The movie also portrays the complex and often difficult relationship between the various partnering companies. Mr. Jimmy and Mike Williams show considerable disdain for the BP staff who they see as interested only in saving money at the expense of rig safety. Mr. Jimmy who works for Transocean the owners of Deepwater Horizon has nothing but contempt for Vidrine. It is also apparent that many of the rig's crew respect Mr. Jimmy.

One of the best scenes in the movie occurs early on when Mike is preparing to leave for his three weeks on the rig and he has breakfast with his daughter Sydney. Sydney is working on a school project that will explain her father's job and how he "tames" the dinosaurs. The scene is both an analogy for drilling an oil well and a foreshadowing of the disaster. Using a coke can which her father shakes, Sydney explains to her father that he tames the dinosaurs by drilling for oil. Sydney rams a metal rod into her can of coke and plugs it with honey - but after she finishes her explanation, the pop explodes out of the metal tube and onto the table, mimicking a well blowout. One of the trailers released for the movie shows this scene:

For the most part the movie is a fairly accurate portrayal of the situation on the rig and the disaster that follows. Williams didn't rescue Mr. Jimmy as in the movie but both men were seriously injured, Williams was left on the rig and did jump over ten stories into the ocean, the survivors did say the Lord's Prayer on the deck of the Damon B. Bankston and the rig was entirely engulfed in flames. The are minor inaccuracies such as when Mike Williams is given a dinosaur tooth by one of the rig staff for his daughter. Retrieval of a large fossil would not be possible because it would be destroyed by the drill bit. There is some dramatic license taken in the movie such as showing bubbles of methane gas escaping from the seabed around the borehole, suggesting to the viewing audience that the well is about to "blow".

Nevertheless Deepwater Horizon is a great action movie, filled with many tense moments and good acting. If anything the movie will help viewers understand the tragedy, learn a bit about the oil industry and remember the human story that seems mostly forgotten. Media focused on the 210 million gallons of oil that leaked into the Gulf of Mexico but Deepwater Horizon helps us to remember the eleven men who died that night. It was both a human tragedy and an ecological disaster.

For those interested in a more detailed description of exactly what is believed to have happened to cause the Deepwater Horizon blowout a video by Encyclopedia Britannica at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOK9J0wETYo  explains the details. 

Popular Mechanics also has a great article "Special Report: Why the BP Oil Rig Blowout Happened" (https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a6065/how-the-bp-oil-rig-blowout-happened/) that is worth reading.

The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm

The Fourteenth Goldfish is a
humorous look at one family's life when a scientific impossibility becomes a reality.

Eleven-year-old Ellie Cruz lives with her mother, a high school drama teacher, in a small, two bedroom house in the Bay Area surrounding San Francisco. One afternoon Ellie's babysitter, Nicole tells her that her mom will be late coming home because she has to pick Ellie's grandfather up from the police station.Ellie can't imagine what her grandfather has gotten into. He's a scientist who's never approved of Ellie's mom's love of theatre, so Ellie knows this will interesting.

When Ellie's mom returns home she is accompanied by a slender, teenage boy with long hair. At first Ellie thinks he might be one of the kids from her mother's theatre crew. As her mother and the boy argue back and forth, Ellie begins to realize that he seems familiar. When she spies the college ring on the boy's finger she realizes the boy is her grandpa.

Her grandfather tells Ellie that he has found a way to reverse aging, through cellular regeneration. He's discovered the fountain of youth. Ellie is filled with disbelief but her mother assures her that the thirteen-year-old boy standing before them is actually her seventy-seven-year-old grandfather, Melvin Herbert Sagarsky.

As Melvin stuffs himself with pizza, he tells Ellie that his vision and hearing has returned and his arthritis is gone. He also says he was picked up by the police for trespassing on private property - the lab where he once worked and whose reputation he helped build.

The next morning Melvin tells Ellie that he needs to get into his lab to recover his jellyfish specimen. He explains to Ellie that he has a species of jellyfish, Turritopsis melvinus in the lab. The T. melvinus is what helped him to "sort out the mechanism for reversing senescence" or the process of aging. Ellie is skeptical but Melvin explains to her that there are plenty of examples in nature of organisms with regenerative abilities. A few months ago, Melvin states that he was contacted by an Australian diver who had found an odd specimen of T. nutricula. When Melvin received the specimen he was certain it was a new species as it was huge and had other differences. So he named it Turritopsis melvinus. He then created a compound which he tested on adult mice who reverted to adolescence. He decided to test it on himself and he too reverted to adolescence. But the jellyfish is still in the lab and Melvin wants it to continue his research.

First though Melvin is sent to school with Ellie. Besides dressing very eccentrically, Melvin loves the large school lunches. As he struggles to fit in at school, Melvin schemes to retrieve his jellyfish from his old lab, in the hopes that he can publish his work and win a coveted Nobel Prize. But as Ellie learns more about the world of science and what it means to be a scientist she begins to wonder at the price some pay for the knowledge they gain and whether every discovery is necessarily good. It is Ellie who forces Melvin to consider the true cost of his discovery.

Discussion

Jennifer Holm has written an engaging, humorous story for younger readers that explores both the importance of science in our lives but also the ethical dilemmas scientists should consider but sometimes do not,  in the face of new discoveries. Holm's writing draws from her personal experience growing up with a father who was a pediatrician and who regularly kept "petri dishes with blood agar in our refrigerator to grow bacteria cultures."

In The Fourteenth Goldfish, Ellie's grandfather Melvin Sagarsky is determined to sneak into his old lab and obtain his jellyfish, T. melvinus, from which he created a compound that reversed aging and turned him from an old man into an adolescent. Melvin shows up at Ellie's house being the snarky, quirky grandfather she's always known except that he's now in the body of a thirteen year old boy. He's determined to recover T. melvinus, continue his research and win the coveted Nobel Prize.

As Ellie spends time with her grandfather, he explains the positive character traits of scientists and why science is so important - that it has brought about good change in the world.  Her grandfather mentions many famous scientists such as Jonas Salk, Robert Oppenheimer and Galileo and presents to his granddaughter what he believes are characteristics that make scientists superior to other people in society. He tells her that scientists are persistent. "Average people just give up at the obstacles we face every day. Scientists fail again and again and again. Sometimes for our whole lives. But we don't give up, because we want solve the puzzle." According to Melvin, scientists "keep trying because they believe in the possible...That it's possible to cure polio. That it's possible to sequence the human genome. That it's possible to find a way to reverse aging. That science can change the world."

Ellie researches the scientists her grandfather has mentioned so she can write about one of them for a school project. While researching Oppenheimer, Ellie discovers that the scientists working on the first atomic bomb had mixed feelings about their success. Oppenheimer stated  "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed. A few people cried. Most people were silent." Ellie understands a little how they felt because her feelings were the same when her "grandfather walked through the front door looking like a teenager." 

Even though they fail at their first attempt to gain access to the lab, Ellie's grandfather remains undeterred, telling Ellie that "Scientists fail all the time...you have to keep at it. Just like Marie Curie" who eventually won a Nobel prize. Once they do rescue the jellyfish specimen from his old lab, her grandfather begins making plans to set up a lab and continue his work. However, Ellie begins to have reservations about his research. Her research into some of the scientists her grandfather mentioned shows that science can also have a dark side too. "Marie Curie was exposed to a lot of radiation during her experiments. Eventually it poisoned her. Her discovery killed her." When her best friend Brianna tells Ellie that she thinks Melvin is cute, Ellie is stunned that her friend likes her seventy-seven year-old grandfather. 

Melvin teaches Ellie to observe the world around her, to ask questions and to think more deeply about things. This has an unexpected result because Ellie begins to seriously consider the consequences of her grandfather's discovery with the critical observation of a scientist.  "I look around my room with new eyes, and what I observe makes me question everything. The handprints on the wall: as people grow older, will hands get smaller instead of bigger because of T. melvinus?...will people have fewer candles on their cake every year because they're getting younger?"  Ellie already knows the other side of the Marie Curie story, but what about Robert Oppenheimer?  Her internet searches reveal that almost two hundred thousand people died because of the atomic bomb. Was the development of the bomb good?

This leads her to question her grandfather about what his discovery will mean for the world: will they have changed it for the better? When Ellie's grandfather clings to the idea that science is always for the good, she counters, "I believe in science! But what if it isn't a good idea? What if we're not Salk? What if we're Oppenheimer? What if T. melvinus is like the bomb?"

Ellie asks her grandfather, "Is growing up, growing old - life - is it all so terrible?" Ellie goes full circle remembering what her grandfather said to her about scientists believing in "the possible".  She tells her grandfather that she wants that possibility of living her life from the age of twelve until she's old. Ellie's idea is further affirmed when she attends her mother's high school production of Our Town, a Thornton Wilder play about life in small town America. The play's central theme is that the living do not appreciate life while they are living it and take the time to savour it fully. This is expressed by the character of Emily who grows up, marries but dies unexpectedly after having her second child. She returns to the living for one day, her twelfth birthday.
"She has a line about whether anyone understands life when they're living it. I get what she's trying to say: life is precious and we don't realize that at the time. But maybe life's also precious because it doesn't last forever. Like an amusement park ride. The roller coaster is exciting the first time. But would it be as fun if you did it again and again and again?" Ultimately, Melvin Herbert Sagarsky gets it and this understanding is shown in what he tells Ellie and what choices he makes.

The Fourteenth Goldfish is a thoughtful novel in which author Jennifer Holm asks her young readers to consider the consequences of scientific discoveries and to ask hard questions. Questions like,  "Should we do something just because we can?" and "How will the discovery of...change the world?"  In this novel it is the discovery of reversing aging but it could be anything - the genetic modification of foods or animals.

One of the strengths of The Fourteenth Goldfish is the strong, well developed characters Holm creates. She has captured the snarky, confident, proud nature of an accomplished, elderly scientist in the character of Melvin Sagarsky. He's a brilliant mix of elderly wit and teenage moodiness. Ellie Cruz is a thoughtful, intelligent young girl whose natural curiosity is sparked by her grandfather. Even the secondary characters are interesting; Raj who shows an interest in Melvin's research and Ben, Ellie's mother's boyfriend who desperately wants to marry her.

The Fourteenth Goldfish is a great novel for middle grade readers and is highly recommended. The title refers to the goldfish Ellie was given by her preschool teacher, Starlily to teach her about the cycle of life. After all her classmates goldfish had died, Ellie's fish seemed to live on and on until it died in fifth grade. But it turns out that Ellie's first goldfish actually died years ago and her mother had been replacing each goldfish with another until that fateful thirteenth in grade five. Melvin is the fourteenth goldfish - the one who lives on and on.

It should be noted that Madame Curie won TWO Nobel Prizes, one in Physics in 1903 and the other in Chemistry in 1911. To this day she remains the only person to have been awarded the Nobel Prize in TWO different sciences. Also poliomyelitis cannot be cured but it can be prevented through vaccination.

Book Details:

The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm
New York: Random House     2014
195 pp.

Albert Einstein and Relativity for Kids by Jerome Pohlen

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

                                                                                         
Everyone knows Albert Einstein developed the theory of relativity but how much do we really know about this famous scientist and his theories? Adults and children alike will be fascinated with the details they learn about Einstein's life and his theories in Jerome Pohlen's book on Einstein. Pohlen tells Einstein's life story in a straightforward manner while also presenting simple experiments that explain some of the points of relatively and physics.

Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany in 1879 to nonobservant Jewish parents, Hermann and Pauline Einstein. His family moved to Munich where Albert lived until he was 15. When their electrical business failed, Hermann moved the family to Milan, Italy without Albert. Albert was not pleased about this and soon found a way to join them. He managed to gain entry into the Swiss Cantonal School of Aarau in Aarau, Switzerland in 1895. At this time of his life, Einstein wanted to renounce his German citizenship and after a period of time he managed to get his father to agree to his request. His citizenship was revoked in January, 1896.

In the fall of 1896, Albert began classes at the Zurich Polytechnic Institute, studying to be a physics teacher. However, Einstein was not a serious student. It was at this time that he met Mileva Maric, one of five students studying physics. Interestingly, Switzerland was the only German-speaking country where Mileva could apply to undertake post-high school studies.

Mileva and Albert gradually became romantically involved. She was the perfect companion for him at this age; intelligent and stimulating. When he graduated, Einstein was unable to find a job and in 1901 Mileva became pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl.  It is not known what happened to this child named Leserl.

Albert and his first wife, Mileva

In 1903 Mileva and Albert married and a year later they had their second child, Hans Albert. It is amazing to see the strong resemblance Hans Albert had to his father when he was younger. You can see this for yourself by viewing the picture of Albert Einstein and his younger sister, Maja, on page 4 and that of Eduardo and Hans Albert taken in 1914 on page 60.

1905 is considered Einstein's "Miracle Year" or "Annus Mirabilus" when he published five groundbreaking papers on time, space and matter that forever changed the way we look at the universe. At this time, the Einsteins were living in Bern, Switzerland, and Albert, chronically underemployed, was working at the Patent Office as a Technical Expert, Third Class. This was a perfect situation for Einstein as he had a group of mathematicians and physicist with which he could discuss problems in theoretical physics. And it provided the right environment for him to formulate some of his key ideas into his most famous theory.

Discussion

In Albert Einstein and Relativity for Kids, Pohlen takes readers through a brief explanation of the innovative concepts in each of Einstein's five papers using examples and simple experiments. An entire chapter explains the basic concepts behind Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity while another chapter explores the ideas of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

After Einstein's ideas were published and he began to gain widespread acclaim, some began to question his theories. claiming his work was Jewish physics and others that his work was immoral because it suggested everything in the universe was relative, included morality. Amazingly, Einstein never won the Nobel Prize for relativity. Instead he won the 1921 Nobel Prize for his work on the photoelectric effect - an area of research his major detractor, German physicist, Philipp Lenard specialized in!

This book also delves into Einstein's personal life which involved him abandoning his first family for another woman, his estrangement from his oldest son, and his fleeing Germany at the outbreak of the Second World War. It also touches on Einstein and the development of the atomic bomb and his pacifist views on war, as well as his latter years. Einstein was not directly involved in the Manhattan Project, which resulted in the first a-bomb, but many of his contemporaries were.

Albert Einstein and Relativity for Kids is marketed as a book for children in Grades 4 to 6 but this book is probably too advanced for that age group and contains too much detail for the younger end of that group. Instead it is better used for older children aged 12+ who have a keen interest in relativity and for those studying the early 20th century. Pohlen's style is readable and engaging. This is a beautiful book, with glossy pages, lots of photographs of Einstein and the major characters in his life story as well as famous scientists of this time period. The front of the book contains a timeline of important dates while the back of the book has a list of books for further study and websites and places to visit.

Image credits: 

Einstein and his wife: https://www.teslasociety.com/Mileva.htm

Book Details:

Albert Einstein and Relativity for Kids by Jerome Pohlen
Chicago: Chicago Review Press   2012
126 pp.