In 2007, Pluto Was Out. This Year, Umami Is In.
RSSHenrietta Thornton-Verma, Editor, Series Made Simple -- School Library Journal, 11/01/2009
Recently, my daughter brought home her first kindergarten assignment. The homework sheet showed the human tongue, with four taste areas drawn in: bitter, sour, sweet, and salty. Her job was to sketch what she had eaten and connect the food with the appropriate taste, drawing a line from Scooby Snack, for example, to the sweet-tasting portion of the tongue. Then I noticed that umami was missing.
What’s umami? It’s a newly accepted fifth taste, that of meat or other savory foods, a fact I learned while editing Carol Surges’s “Eew, That’s Gross!” series for this issue (see page 37). I’m not pointing this out just to demonstrate that your collection needs updating (although it might!), but to counter the misperception that series nonfiction is the same old content, season after season. Nothing could be further from the truth.
This issue of Series Made Simple covers 167 series in 18 subject areas, and our tireless reviewers have some really innovative materials to recommend (and a few series for you to avoid). And, speaking of innovative, we’re also presenting advice from one of SLJ’s bloggers, Diane Chen, on what to do with all those great books–beyond assignments–once you’ve bought them (see p. 68).
As usual, each article covers only new series, and clearly states which to buy. We arrive at the subjects by tallying all the series being published in a season and determining which topics are most common. This season we’re presenting some subjects new to Series Made Simple, including performance art (p. 52), Earth science (p. 28), religion (p. 9), and science projects (p. 43). The environment (pp. 16-23) is so popular, we’re presenting this topic in two articles, one covering series for elementary school students, and the other for middle and high schoolers.
Don’t forget, this and other issues of Series Made Simple are available at slj.com. Click on “Supplements” on the navigation bar along the top of the page. Comments, suggestions, or questions? Drop me a line.
henrietta.thornton@reedbusiness.com
