Book Review And Giveaway – Marvelous Makeable Monsters

Marvelous Makeable Monsters -by Sam Haynor

What can a makeable monster do? They motor, inflate, wobble, drool, soar, and one can even do push-ups. The best thing about these monsters is that they’re part experiment, part imagination, and 100% customizable. Author Sam Haynor draws on his experience with the San Francisco Exploratorium, Oakland Toy Lab, GoldieBlox, and designing STEAM curriculum to create projects packed with fun features. With 21 different projects you could setup a lesson plan to suit your classroom, homeschool or home environment. You don’t need to be an educator to be able to achieve or educate your child with these projects and tutorials. I love when crafts become science and play becomes education!

Giveaway

We think this book should be a part of your resource bookshelf. We love it so much that we are giving away 5 copies to 5 lucky Craftgossip.com readers (US address only)

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Entries close on the 25th of October 2018 – Winners will be contacted via e-mail at the close of the giveaway.

Kids all seem to go through a phase of loving trivia, and if you’ve got kids who want to know about the tallest, biggest and weirdest things in nature, they’ll enjoy the book Once in a Blue Moon by Emily Hawkins.

The book explores wonders of astronomy, meteorology, big trees, weird animals, volcanoes and more to show off the rarest events and phenomena in the natural world.

Kids ages 7-10 will learn about the lake (Lake Hillier, on an island off Australia) that has water that’s bubblegum pink, the world’s deepst came (Veryovkina Cave in the country of Georgia) and the world’s biggest tree, a banyan in southeast India with a canopy that covers more than five acres!

Readers will learn what a blue moon is, how supernovas happen and about Haley’s comet and solar eclipses, among other space-related phenomena. Closer to home they’ll learn about stinky flowers, bleeding trees, glowing fungi and pizzly bears.

There’s content about times when it’s rained frogs (and when frogs have exploded en masse), when snow made giant snowballs all by itself and how clouds stack on themselves like pancakes. The book also explores ball lightning, sun dogs, St. Elmo’s fire and more.

I love books like this and I know kids do, too. There’s so much weird and wonderful about our world and even as adults we don’t know about all of these things. I found it fun to learn, for example, that there’s a volcano on the island of Java that not only sends out blue flames from vents near its crater, it’s also home to an acidic lake.

Illustrations by Vlad Stankovic illuminate these weird natural wonders and are sure to get kids interested in learning more about some of these remarkable animals, plants, rock formations and more.

About the book: 80 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Wide Eyed Editions. Suggested retail price $30.

Have you read?