Hungry for Engineering: Poems to Gnaw On

Written by Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming

Illustrated by Dave Whamond

Fitzhenry & Whiteside

978-1-554556427

32 pp.

Ages 5-8

December 2024

 

For teachers and parents who love a blend of everything, the Hungry For series by Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming will always fit the bill. A blend of non-fiction STEM with poetry and humour and fabulous illustrations, Hungry for Engineering: Poems to Gnaw On is their fourth and latest addition to the series, introducing a variety of engineering concepts in bite-size poems that educate and entertain.

From Hungry for Engineering: Poems to Gnaw On by Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming, illustrated by Dave Whamond

In a series of eleven poems, some short and others than span several pages, Kari-Lynn Winter and Lori Sherritt-Fleming delve into all manner of the physical sciences. From the concept of fasteners ("Handy Luke Randy's Fit-It-Up Fasteners") to get power from the sun and wind ("Run by the Sun" and "Wind Tower Power"), and to the ubiquitous "Egg Drop" challenge, they cover a full range of engineering concepts. There's lots to learn about simple machines and forces at work and the mechanics of movement of different materials. Better yet, their poems show kids having fun trying things out, making things move, experimenting and observing, and persevering in their learning. I particularly enjoyed the poem "Clear As Mud?" which shows two children working at filtering muddy water to make it potable, and ends with....

It worked a little, I must admit...

I'll try some more. I will not quit!

From Hungry for Engineering: Poems to Gnaw On by Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming, illustrated by Dave Whamond

The concepts that Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming include, many described in the appended glossary, are a great sampler for the physical sciences and a great introduction for younger readers. Hungry for Engineering would be a fabulous hook to start a lesson or two or even a follow-up for children to identify all the concepts they've already learned. Best of all, the poems are funny rhymes with a host of wacky characters from Scary Miss Mary and Luke Randy to Liam O'Leary the inventor and Marianne the girl who uses wind power to blast her to Japan. And the forms these poems take are everything from a limerick and familiar quatrains, to visual poems, in which some words demonstrate their meanings like fall, drop, and downward. 

There's learning that will happen and rhyming joy with the read-aloud but Dave Whamond's illustrations take the poems from entertaining to vigorously animated. There are Godzilla-like creatures munching skyscrapers, a dragon using a stapler, several ingenious Rube Goldberg machines, and a fully-occupied bug hotel created of a variety of materials. His art is colourful and wacky, inclusive and bustling. There's much to see in the details, and the learning will go beyond the text into the illustrations as they search for simple machines and fasteners and more.

From Hungry for Engineering: Poems to Gnaw On by Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming, illustrated by Dave Whamond

Whether your little ones are building or taking apart, investigating or observing, Hungry for Engineering: Poems to Gnaw On will inspire them to see the magnitude of engineering in their lives and in the world around them. They'll be learning while they're laughing, and rhyming their way through the nuts and bolts of engineering, courtesy of Kari-Lynn Winters, Lori Sherritt-Fleming and Dave Whamond.

 

 • • • • • • •

 

Hungry for Math: Poems to Munch On (2015)

 Hungry for Science: Poems to Crunch On (2018)

Hungry for the Arts: Poems to Chomp On (2022)

Hungry for Engineering: Poems to Gnaw On (2024)

 

Hungry for the Arts: Poems to Chomp On

Written by Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming

Illustrated by Peggy Collins

Fitzhenry & Whiteside

978-1-55455-466-9

32 pp.

Ages 5-8

March 2022

From the creative team that brought us Hungry for Math: Poems to Munch On and Hungry for Science: Poems to Crunch On comes a new book of lively poetry based in the arts of drama, music, dance and visual arts. 

From Hungry for the Arts: Poems to Chomp On by Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming, illus. by Peggy Collins

Colour-coded to organize the poetry which can span several pages–orange for dance, green for drama, turquoise for music and purple for visual arts–authors Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori-Sherritt-Fleming take young readers onto the stage and into the studio to find ways to express themselves. They are encouraged to...

Munch on motion

Chomp on play.

Chew on chants.

Eat ARTS all day!

And to...

Choose buffets or a-la-carte.

Music,

  dance,

    drama, 

      art!

From Hungry for the Arts: Poems to Chomp On by Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming, illus. by Peggy Collins

There's the poem called "Those Cats Can Play" which has a quartet of felines improvising with a variety of notes and "A Little More Forte" in which an elephant and a house mouse must learn about forte, piano, decrescendo and crescendo. In the dance poems, identified by the orange dot in the corner of the first page, some dinosaurs disco, tango and hip hop their way across the dance floor ("Dinosaur Dance Floor") while in "The Whammy-Roo" a child in a wheelchair introduces her friend to her new dance.

From Hungry for the Arts: Poems to Chomp On by Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming, illus. by Peggy Collins

In the drama poems that include  "When I'm" and "A Dramatic Ride" kids try out movements, improvise with costumes and perform, imaging themselves as anything from a roller coaster to a tiger and a pirate. And the poems based in the visual arts are just as colourful and entertaining, encouraging young readers to think about textures and shapes and create from found objects. In the thirteen poems in the book, Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming introduce children to new terms–a snappy glossary summarizes this new vocabulary–and encourage them to explore the different art forms with some playful poems that may or may not rhyme.

From Hungry for the Arts: Poems to Chomp On by Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming, illus. by Peggy Collins

Peggy Collins, whose book Harley the Hero recently won the Forest of Reading's Blue Spruce Award, brings the joy of making art to the page. Her own artwork bursts from the story in an explosion of life through her use of colour and shape and line. There are no wallflowers in Hungry for the Arts. Every poem is animated with animals and children, robots and activity. As the creators make art, through their singing, their dancing, their performance and their displays, readers will learn from the words and the play.

We've munched on poems, crunched on poems and now we get to chomp on them too. With the rhythm of the music, the step of a light foot, a stroke of a brush and a flourish on a stage, Kari-Lynn Winters, Lori Sherritt-Fleming and Peggy Collins take us into the places where children get creative and express themselves in whatever art form speaks to them, and we're there to applaud all their efforts.

Hungry for Science: Poems to Crunch On

Written by Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming

Illustrated by Peggy Collins

Fitzhenry & Whiteside

978-1-55455-396-9

32 pp.

Ages 6-9

June 2018

It's Science Literacy Week in Canada and Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming use rhyming verses and inclusive and diverse perspectives on biology, chemistry and physics in Hungry for Science: Poems to Crunch On to help children see the science in everything.

There are poems about geology, structures, life cycles, chemistry at work, seasons, magnetism, brain waves, senses, botany, force and differentiating between living and non-living things. It's the primary curriculum plus in a fun package of poetry and dynamic illustrations by Peggy Collins. And everyone is doing science: girls, boys, monsters, armadillos, physically-challenged individuals, kids with braces, kids with glasses, and kids of all hues and abilities.  It's science learning at its best and most lively.

She's hungry for science.
Her hunger's so great.
Stirring her mixtures
who'd guess that she's eight?

It's the manner in which the concepts are shared that makes Hungry for Science so entertaining. The life cycle of a flea in "An Ode to Flea" details the birth and death of Little Miss Pesky Flea who

Lived three months and caused such strife
a doggone long and itchy life!

Captain Chemistry helps unclog a sink drain with an all-purpose cleaner of baking soda and vinegar, and Scary Miss Mary shares how her odd garden of "carnivorous snappers and large creepy wrappers and that stinky, zombie-faced rose" grows.

From Hungry for Science: Poems to Munch On by Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming, illus. by Peggy Collins

With a glossary and descriptions of the concepts taught in each poem, Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming complete Hungry for Science with the expository text perfect for a book on science. Peggy Collins, who also illustrated Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming's earlier STEM picture book, Hungry for Math: Poems to Munch On (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2015), ensures the lightness and brightness of tone is reinforced in her artwork, adding quirky creative details like a rainbow of plumes from the primary sense organs and an evil below-ground carrot in Scary Miss Mary's garden.

From Hungry for Science: Poems to Crunch On by Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming, illus. by Peggy Collins

Have some fun with teaching simple science concepts to children with Hungry for Science: Poems to Crunch On and inspire a child to become a scientist everyday.

Hungry for Math: Poems to Munch On

Written by Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming

Illustrated by Peggy Collins

Fitzhenry & Whiteside

978-1-55455-307-5

32 pp.

Ages 5-8

January, 2015

Teachers and parents will always be clamouring for new and innovative ways to introduce math concepts, and Hungry for Math: Poems to Munch On will surely work.  But forget the classroom and math instruction, or at least put them aside temporarily, and enjoy the rhyme and reason of the verses within and the varied illustrations of dragons, foxes, clockworks and race cars to add the jauntiness that numbers and operations and such can be.

You know that between the dramatic flare of Kari-Lynn Winters and the Tickle Trunk Players founder, Lori Sherritt-Fleming, Hungry for Math: Poems to Munch On has that special something to add spice to early math literacy learnings.  From unique poems like The Balanced Bee with its zen-like insect, the banging of the drum in Patterns Rock! and The Spendosaur in which a dinosaur goes a little crazy spending his coins in a candy store, the math lessons are neither obvious nor necessary to appreciate the silliness of the rhymes.

The Balanced Bee

Three circles, tall not wide.

Six legs – three per side.

Two plus two wings, on its back.

Bands of yellow, white, and black.

Compound eyes to spy the view.

Antennae, not one – always two.

Now fold your paper.

It's plain to see.

Bees are balanced.

It's symmetry! (pg. 5)

Even a poem like Move Around The Clock, that borrows from nursery rhyme Hickory Dickory Dock, takes on a unique flair with an active mouse in a dress changing her movements with the time amongst the clockwork gears.

Whether you want your child to count the five groups of ten fire-breathing creatures in Rot-TEN Dragons or the abundance of heart-shaped treats (which look very familiar) shelled out amongst the cats in That Kitty Counts is irrelevant. Little ones will want to count the assortment of delectables, determine the banana leaves needed to cover the treasure and learn to skip count in 2s or 5s, especially with Peggy Collins' fun characters, human and non, to accompany them along the way.  Kids won't even know they're learning. That adds up to a book full of promise.