Title: Take Us Flying Kiko!
Author: Lyn Y
Publisher: PartridgePublishing
ISBN: 978-1-5437-6434-5
Pages: 56
Genre: Illustrated Children’s Educational / Science
Reviewed by: Beth Adams
Read Book Review
Children’s imagination will go “Up-Up-and-Away” when paging this remarkably fact-filled illustrated educational book about flight. The mystery of flying is broken down into bite- sized morsels of information, enabling youngsters to learn about so many fundamentals of the physics, vocabulary, and history of flight.
Take Us Flying Kiko! is apply subtitled, Theory of Aviation, but author Lyn Y goes far beyond all categories about flight – from birds evolving from dinosaurs, to the French inventing hot air balloons, then on to the development of powered flight – revealing the physics of modern-day airplanes. All while being narrated by two brothers, Joshua and Elijah conversing with a beautiful blue bird named Kikoman, hence Kiko for short. This methodology in penning this book is ingenious; bringing a personified bird, Kiko, into the role of instructing the children about the mysteries and history of flight.
The format of this book lays out and repeats frankly most of the history, milestones, and scientific principles of aircraft. It certainly is a huge subject, but written at the level of youngsters’ comprehension, as it is very clever in not only providing much needed factual information, but undoubtably satisfying the innate curiosity of children who witness almost every day, airplanes in the sky, birds winging around the trees, and occasional parachutes or even hot air balloons. How do they all work? Take Us Flying Kiko! provides a solid foundation for the youngsters’ minds to build upon so cleverly; as not to intimidate as perhaps more complex educational material of other books on this topic may dryly layout.
The information uses many educational tools and techniques, such as repeating new words and concepts enabling to drill-in the information, quizzes, questions and answers, word games and even a glossary. Exercises in creating paper planes and other projects round off the reading into tangents of fun activities under the supervision of adults. There is so much to learn and this book brings a great deal of fun-filled-factoids to the reading audience.
Any child with aspirations of becoming an astronaut, or pilot, or just going on a trip in a jet plane, will be totally immersed in this book. Reading this over-and-over will enable kids to be ahead of the curve when ultimately taking physics and engineering classes in school, aquatinting them with the amazing fundamentals of flight. So much information is taken for granted by those of us who have grown up with the development of the airline industry, that Take Us Flying Kiko! is such a gem to share with children at the single-digit-year’s ages to learn. I highly recommend this to be a part of every family library.
