STEM #Kidlit for Toddlers: Baby Loves the Five Senses

Be on the look out next week for three new board books for the youngest readers in the Baby Loves Science series:

all by Ruth Spiro and illustrated by Irene Chan.

We’ve reviewed a couple of other books in this series in the past and were eager to see the newest versions.

What’s to like:

The series has a lot going for it. Each book features Chan’s delightful illustrations and Spiro’s bouncing, enthusiastic text. Babies hear STEM vocabulary words that might not come up in typical conversations. The concepts are simplified, but not to the point they are no longer accurate.

I recently led a STEM story time about senses for preschoolers and these Baby Loves The Five Senses books would have been a welcome addition.

On the other hand:

Since the series began, the Baby Loves books have become more and more technical in a few pages in the middle. For example, for the one about taste:

“When Baby chews the strawberries, some of the flavor molecules stick to the receptor cells.”

It goes on to discuss electrical signals in the brain.

For certain children this level of detail is welcome and is likely to generate even more questions.

For others, however, it might not be the right time to discuss more advanced concepts. I had that experience during the story time I mentioned above. I choose some books about insect senses to show how our senses are similar and different to other animals. This is a topic I think is fascinating, but the children just weren’t ready for it. They needed to understand what human senses were before they could compare to others. If your young readers aren’t receptive to the concepts in this book, you can skip those pages. Perhaps you can return to them later when they are older or have had more experience.

Overall. the Baby Loves The Five Senses books fill a unique niche of introducing science to the youngest readers.

See Exploring Our Senses preschool story time at Growing with Science blog for activity suggestions.
Check out our growing list of children’s books about senses at Science Books for Kids.

Age Range: 2 – 3 years
Series: Baby Loves Science
Publisher: Charlesbridge; Illustrated edition (August 18, 2020)
ISBN-10: 1623541549
ISBN-13: 978-1623541545