Child’s play

Atoms and Molecules – a child’s guide to chemistry
Adam Smith
2012 | 14pp | £1.98 (Kindle only)
AISN B008EX6HM0
Reviewed by Richard Kidd and family
http://amzn.to/Y5ptd6

Clearly a book designed to ‘introduce infants and toddlers to the shapes and sounds of chemistry’ needed live testing:

Susan (age 7):

It starts off simple, but then it just gets so complicated I don’t understand it. There are some tricky words – I do not know what a three dimensional wave is, so how will anyone younger? Younger ones will also not know what methane, ethanol, DNA or a lipid is. Some of the letters next to the drawings don’t mean anything.

Helen (age 10):

This book is quite hard to understand nearer the end. How are 6 year olds meant to understand a three dimensional wave? I am a 10 year old and I don’t understand what it is. I also want to know why there are random letters around the pictures; perhaps they are atom names? I like how the pictures are simple and look rather spectacular.

Richard (age 47):

It’s tricky to work out the age this is aimed at – there are only a few pages, but a third of the way through the terms ramp up to GCSE and A-level concepts. The child’s pictures were just enough to hold my two year old’s interest, but the older ones were a bit baffled.

Purchase Atoms and Molecules for the Kindle on Amazon.co.uk