You Can't Smell A Flower With Your Ear (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition) (All Aboard Reading: Level 2)

Joanna Cole has taught elementary school, has worked with a news magazine, and was for several years a senior editor of children's books. Today she is a full-time author writing for children. Among the dozens of highly praised children's books she has written are The Magic School Bus books. She has compiled numerous anthologies, including several with Stephanie Calmenson. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and daughter.

Gr. 1-3. Cole's lively text, with examples drawn from daily life, presents some quite complicated scientific information about how the five senses work. Smith's line-and-watercolor cartoons add to the fun even as they help explain the physiology. There are simple diagrams of the eye, ear, nose, and tongue, and explanations about how nerves "like wires" carry messages to the brain. Experiments encourage kids to "try this" and discover, for example, how the sense of taste gets a lot of help from the sense of smell. Words like molecules are no longer intimidating when they describe how the smell of pizza enters your nostrils. Even older readers will welcome this clear, practical title in the All Aboard Reading series. Hazel Rochman