Books and links

Today, you get a bunch of links for book lists, mostly history and science, because we're too busy enjoying all the snow that's fallen in the past 24 hours. The best dad ever not only came home with lots of extra milk for hot chocolate but also got the tractor last night after dinner and made a snow hill in the front yard for the kids. And since we're staring Spring in the face here, the principal made a last-minute change in the schedule this morning -- two hours of sledding for all, then math.

• Via Chris Barton at Bartography, this list of American Historical Fiction in Picture Book Format from the University of Iowa. The list is broken down chronologically, into North America before 1600; American Colonies, 1600-1774; American Revolution, 1775-1783; and so on, up through Mid-Twentieth Century, 1946-1975.
  

• As a nice go-along, the Penticton Public Library in British Columbia has a list of books "If You Love Little House...(For Fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder)". Includes American classics such as The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh and Louise Erdrich's The Birchbark House to a book I was reminded of by JoVE at Tricotomania just today, Pioneer Girl by Maryanne Caswell. From Penticton's blurb on the book: "When Maryanne Caswell left 'civilized' Ontario for a new life on the Prairies in 1887, she promised to write to her grandmother and share all her adventures. Her grandmother kept the letters and nearly seventy years later, they were published in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix newspaper. Maryanne's tales of her first year in what would later become the province of Saskatchewan make for great reading. " For the younger set, the library offers a page of "Pioneers in Pictures: Visiting the Past in Picturebooks". The Library also has an entire web page full of kids' book lists, from "If You Like Harry Potter..." to "Bound for Adventure" to "Cattails: Felines in Fiction".

• Biology professor P.Z. Myers has compiled lists of books on evolution and prehistory for kids, the adult layman, and the more advanced/specialized adult reader; don't forget to read through the comments for other suggested titles. For home schooling parents always looking for decent biology books, especially for upper level students, this list has some gems, including Evolutionary Biology by Douglas J. Futuyma, about which the good professor says, "If you don't mind reading a textbook, this is one of the best and most popular texts on the subject". And An Introduction to Biological Evolution by Kenneth Kardong: "Another textbook, but less weighty and less expensive then Futuyma's; a book I'd use in a freshman non-majors course." Which sounds just right for home school high school biology.

• Professor Myers kindly provides a link to Coturnix's science book list for adults. Coturnix is another biologist, Bora Zivkovic, and his list includes "my top picks of books in each of the six science topics" (mostly in biology because of Bora's professional interests): Genetics Explained; Evolution for the 21st Century; Animals, Ecology and Natural History; Physiology and Behavior; Health, Medicine, Clocks, Sleep, Aging and Death; and Meta-science, Pseudo-science and Nonsense. Plenty of things for everyone, with lots of Stephen Jay Gould and some Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel) too.