Living Sunlight: How Plants Bring the Earth to Life

This is a great book!! We have this book at home and also bought this book for the teachers to have at school. Molly Bang has a nice website with information for teachers. I love her art and the information/story is wonderful!!!

This amazingly simple book explains photosynthesis, and how life on earth is connected to it. Simple explanation is fun, bringing scientific knowledge down to small child's level is not easy, and I need to applaud the makers of this book (author/illustrator and MIT professor of ecology). The illustrations are gorgeous, lavish and conceptually skilled. Language is poetic and also has dashes of humor, and of course is scientifically accurate, but simple that it can be understood with ease and enjoyed. The book is a great introduction to the world of natural phenomena and scientific language.And colors are jewel-like, many life forms are depicted so nicely, and composition of those lush pictures is great.

This book focuses on photosynthesis and the way that the sun's energy is related to nearly all the life on earth. But it also provides a framework for understanding earth systems -- the way that biological and chemical and physical processes are all bound up together, and how they interact in the atmosphere and waters and soils and plants and animals. A kid who reads and re-reads this book can, if it sinks in, begin piecing together all the bits of scientific knowledge that they pick up from their own observations or their visits to museums or their classroom teachers. It's a great book.

First of all, I wonder if the writer of the Product Description in the Editorial Review section ever read this book! Living Sunlight does not show "children, teachers, and parents the remarkable magic of what makes us human." This book is about photosynthesis, not magic or being human. I love that the narrator is the sun, who is "talking" to children with a clear, respectful, and lyrical voice. I have explained many complicated ideas to children but I could never have explained how photosynthesis works in the personal and immediate way that Molly Bang and Penny Chisholm have. Like all of Molly Bang's books, Living Sunlight is beautifully illustrated; children enjoy examining the details on each page. She uses the same style of illustrations as those in the previous, companion books, Common Ground and My Light. Visually and thematically, these 3 books go together. Hurry up bookstore buyers, teachers, librarians, parents, and friends of children! If you didn't have Living Sunlight for Earth Day, buy it now because every day is Earth Day.

Every child has a long list of "whys." Some questions are easy for a parent to answer while others, such as those in the scientific department take a bit more thought. Why do we have light? Why are plants important? What would happen if there were no plants on earth? Holly Bang and Penny Chisholm have teamed up to explain the concept of photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is a very complex process, yet they make it seem simple by explaining how light energy is converted to chemical energy and stored as "CHUNKA-CHUNKA-CHUNKA . . . sugar!" "My light becomes the energy for all life on Earth. All living things -- including YOU -- pulse with my light and keep circling round and round on Earth." I loved the simple, beautiful flow of this book. I was immediately drawn to select this book by the stunning artwork. The scientific lesson and the illustrations mesh perfectly. With books like this science for the young child can be exciting and fun!