Invisible is a wordless book about an afternoon spent in a seaside town full of interesting characters. Not only will you smile at the Kamm’s observations about the rich panoply of life, from nuns to peeing dogs, you’ll enjoy the tricks the pictures play on your eye; on each spread something appears invisible because it blends in with the background colour. Only the negative shape left behind gives a clue as to what has become invisible, and so it becomes a game to see if you can work out what that is before you turn the page.

The illusions are clever and witty, and the bright, bold, saturated colours give this book a fresh feel. The game is fun even (or perhaps especially) once you know what’s going on – there’s something delightful about being tricked, about falling for the illusion (in this way it reminded me a little of Tullet’s much acclaimed Press Here).

Image copyright: Katja Kamm

This spunky book might not appeal to everyone. There’s nudity (well, invisible nudity…), buxom punks, as well as an anatomically correct male dog doing what dogs like best to do on the pavement, and I do feel uncomfortable about the scene where the nuns are frightened by something in the (black) night – it turns out to be a black man. But it’s nevertheless a fun, original read that I’d definitely recommend to anyone interested in illustration or design: I thought Invisible was a breath of fresh air and am delighted to have discovered it thanks to Gathering Books’ Award Winning Book Challenge.

Of course the girls (and I) wanted to play at being invisible after reading this super book. Making an entire child (or mum) invisible is a little tricky, but I did show the girls how they could make a stamp or a sticker (appear to be) invisible.

I sent the girls out of the room whilst I got everything ready: I put two lidded jam jars on the worksurface. One was filled with water, and underneath it I placed a stamp.

I then invited the girls in and asked them to take a look at the jars. Did either of the jars have something underneath them?, I asked… No, came the rather unexcited reply.

I then took the lids off the jars and asked the girls to look from the top. Now could they see anything underneath either of the jars?

Ah, yes! A stamp (and no ordinary stamp at that!). The girls looked again from the side and once again the stamp seemed invisible, yet when they looked from the top, Matilda was smiling back at them.

Having replaced the lids, I picked up the jars and the girls got to investigate what difference the water made in the jars. First the empty jar was placed on the stamp, then the jar filled with water. With the empty jar on top, the stamp was clearly visible from the side…

…but with the water-filled jar on top, the stamp suddenly became invisible! Ta-da!

So very simple, but so very effective

And what’s going on here? Very simply put, when light passes from water to air it gets bent, making the object appear to be somewhere else. In this case, the water makes the stamp appear higher up, nearer the surface of the water. Looking from the side, the refracted image can’t be seen, but looking from above it can.

Whilst making stamps disappear, we listened to:

(I also considered Invisible Touch by Genesis, Invisible by Alison Moyet, but they didn’t make the cut )

Other creative ideas that work well with Invisible include:

Now at the top of this post I talked about two personal goals for Playing by the book this year. To help me achieve my second goal, I’ve signed up for Pinterest. You can find me here on Pinterest, where I’ll be gathering my favourite creative ideas from around the web, especially creative ideas to do with books. I’ve even created a board with more invisibility ideas if you’re looking for yet more fun things to do alongside Katje Kamm’s Invisible.

Super Science: Feel the Force! by Tom Adams and Thomas Flintham is one such book. A physically robust pop-up book, illustrated in comic book style with bold colours, Feel the Force! explores gravity, friction, floating, pressure, sounds, light, electricity and magnetism in a super child-friendly manner.

Each double page spread is dedicated to one topic, presented a little like a memo board with short notes on interesting phenomena and their explanations, mini biographies of famous scientists (such as Archimedes and Robert Boyle), and experiments to try at home. There are flaps to flip, tabs to pull and and fun paper engineering bringing the topic under discussion to 3-D life (my favourite bit of paper engineering is the bed of nails, though the water pistol elicits most giggles from my girls ).

Templar, whose book How the World Works, was the ultimate winner of last year’s Royal Society’s Young People’s Book Prize (my review is here) have produced another book that will definitely get children and their grownups excited by science. Let’s hope more such books are being planned by Templar as they certainly know how to put together a team of great writers, illustrators and pop-up magicians!

Seeing as Feel the Force! includes experiment ideas we decide to try some of them out. First up was the floating/sinking experiment.

M and J took a lump of plasticine (modelling clay), and dropped it gently into a bowl of water.

It sank. They weighed it and then squished it into a bowl shape. They weighed it again. Of course the bowl weighed the same as the lump.

But this time the plasticine floated when place on the water.

How come something that weighed the same sank first time but floated second time? (Of course Feel the Force! has the answer )

Next up we investigated friction. The girls placed a hardback book (and no ordinary hardback book if you look closely!) on the table and put a tin of beans (ie something heavy) on top. We lined the book up with the edge of the table and then the girls gave the book a push. We measured how far across the table the book scooted (about 10cm on repeated attempts).

Then we placed the book with the tin on top onto a bed of maltesers (you could use marbles, but why use glass when you can use chocolate?).

Again we lined the book up with the edge of the table and gave it a push. This time the book scooted on average about 35 cm across the table.

So we learned how shapes that roll are easier to move than those that have to be dragged and we talked about ball bearings inside joints, like the pedals on the girls’ bikes.

Then we ate all the chocolate.

It’s a tough life being a scientist but someone’s gotta do it.

I have to add we tried two more experiments from the book (one to do with jumping coins and air pressure, and the other to do with making mini electrical currents using silver foil and coins) which did not work for us. It might have been useful if the book had had a little section at the back on troubleshooting. It’s a shame not all the experiments were foolproof, but I would still highly recommend this book if you want to pique your children’s curiosity and get them excited about science.

Whilst we investigated forces we listened to:

Under Pressure by Queen with David Bowie

Whilst looking for songs to enjoy listening to I came across this listing of physics songs hosted by Haverford University and this meta list of science and maths songs hosted by Washington University.


Other activities which would go well with reading Feel the Force include:

So that was the week that featured edible books, cream cakes and chocolate treats… just as well none of my New Year’s Resolutions were about food!

Thanks go to @MalRostan, @Lancs and @wildelycreative for their spherical sweetie advice.

Disclosure: I received my copy of this book from the publisher. This review, however, remains my own and honest opinion.

A pop-up book covering a wealth of ground, How The World Works is a tremendous introduction to topics as diverse as the solar system, evolution, plate tectonics, the water cycle, weather systems, photosynthesis and food chains.

Each double page spread covers one theme and explores it using exciting illustrations, illuminating paper engineering and and array of both key and intriguing facts presented in inviting, bite-sized portions. The illustrations have the rich colours and boldness you often see with Barefoot Books (though this is actually published by Templar). The short sections of text make this an undaunting book for young independent readers.

As well of plenty of flaps and tabs, there are lots of instances where the paper engineering really adds to your understanding of the topic under discussion. For example the big bang explosion is a brilliantly executed bit of fold out paper – simple, but very effective as it mimics an explosion. How the continents have drifted over time is beautifully illustrated with a flip book – by flipping the pages we can actually see the continents drifting from the supercontinent Pangaea about 200 million years ago to their current location.

Again, the paper engineering is put to exceptional use to illustrate what happens at different types of plate boundary; Andy Mansfield, the brains behind the pop-up aspect of this book, has created paper tricks that are not only great fun but, but informative and meaningful.

This book contains a subtle but consistent message about how we as humans are having an impact on the earth and what the consequences of our actions will be. In the section on carbon there are tips about how we can reduce our carbon footprint, whilst the pages devoted to how plants work draw attention to the problems caused by deforestation. In the discussion of ocean currents and tides we’re introduced to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, “an area of plastic rubbish twice the size of Texas” floating in the Pacific ocean, whilst when exploring the the planets, the large quantity of space junk orbiting the earth is highlighted. Not only does this book tell us how the world works, it also makes us think about how it’s beginning to break down.

Click image to go to original full scale image

We printed out the image twice (for flip books to work easily and effectively it seemed from reading around on the web you need a good number of pages in your book) and then cut out the moons.

We pasted our cut-out moons into the top right hand corner of index cards we had painted black and then we used gold and silver markers to fill the surrounding sky with sparkling stars.

Finally we bound our book using a crocodile clip (we tried an elastic band but didn’t have one which was strong and big enough to really hold the pages in place) and started flicking.

I haven’t got the facility to make videos so here’s an animation of the moon phases (in the Northern hemisphere)

Click the image to be taken to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's super moon animation

What I learned in the process of making this flip book is that is is really important to number your images so you can be sure you stick them in the right order (I did this by – before cutting out the individual moons – holding my printed image up to the light at a window and simply pencilling on the back of each image the number in sequence). It was also helpful to number the index cards corresponding to the stage in the moon’s cycle so that assembly of the book was straightforward.

Older children may of course be able to draw enough images each with small enough changes to illustrate their own flip books, but by using prepared photos making a flip book became possible even for my three year old.

Whilst we made our flip book we listened to:

Other activities which would work well alongside reading How The World Works include:

Have you ever made flip books with your kids? What sort of images did you find worked well? Of the two books nominated for the RS prize I’ve so far reviewed, which do you like the sound of best? The Darwin biography or this one?

This book is one of six books shortlisted for the Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize 2011, an award that celebrates the best recent books that communicate science to young people. The winner will be announced on December 1st.




Disclosure: I received my copy of this book from the publisher. This review, however, reflect my own and honest opinion.