General Relativity for Babies

June 1, 2017

Gr 5 Up-Ostensibly aimed at toddlers but more serviceable as stealth instruction for older students and caregivers who are a bit hazy on the basics of quantum and Newtonian physics, these board books attempt to explain concepts such as black holes, how rockets and airfoils work, and how energy-measured in quanta-moves electrons only to specific orbits around an atomic nucleus. In General Relativity, for instance, Ferrie, a physicist, uses grids and dots that are color-coded to words in the pithy captions to demonstrate how "mass drags space" and "space drags mass" and ultimately how two black holes spinning around each other "send ripples through space called gravitational waves" that "stretch and squish space throughout the universe." Each of these four outings (and there are more on the way) ends with an optimistic variation on "Now you know GENERAL RELATIVITY!" Not quite...but the taste may make the physical laws and phenomena on which our current understanding of reality is based more easily palatable when next encountered down the road. VERDICT As with Ruth Spiro's Baby Loves Quarks!, the topical reach is well beyond the grasp of even the most precocious young Einsteins, but their parents or older siblings may benefit from these quick refreshers.-John Peters, Children's Literature Consultant, New York

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