Illustrated by Holly Hatam and Ana Ochoa

Tilbury House Publishers, Thomaston, Maine, 2020.

Acadia is a kid who loves science. She’s full of questions and eager to learn their answers. She seeks answers through conversations with her scientist parents and through her own research both in the field and online. Each chapter includes a section of Acadia’s science journal with her findings from her explorations, experiments, and research, vocabulary words that relate to the chapter, and further related questions Acadia has. These sections are packed with information, charmingly illustrated, and show great examples of lab reports following the scientific method, a field journal, and ways to organize information such as a point graph and a timeline.

It’s not always a good idea to start a book series with the last book in the series. It can be confusing and sometimes annoying when the author doesn’t do a good job of explaining references from previous books, so a reader takes a risk. But this book landed in my review pile this week. It was seasonally appropriate—I read it on Earth Day, and looked appealing, so I decided to give it a go. I wasn’t disappointed by starting last. The characters are quite straightforward, as it’s primarily a book about science concepts, so there’s little catching up to do there. The references to the other books provide enough information that you could understand it’s a reference to an earlier book, and many are interesting enough to encourage readers to seek out the story behind the information referenced. That’s great, because as these books have seasonal themes, kids will probably choose to read them season by season rather than in order.

Filled with great information about meteor showers; reawakening plants and animals; ticks, mosquitoes and parasites; Earth Day and pesticides; this book will capture the attention of eager science learners. The charming illustrations make the information very accessible to late elementary school and middle school kids. It’s also easy to see this book used in the classroom or a home school environment. Acadia’s science journal provides a great model for students to use when performing their own experiments, recording their observations in the field, researching, or collecting data.

I received an electronic copy of The Acadia Files, Book Four, Spring Science in exchange for an honest review.