The Tree Rings' Tale: Understanding Our Changing Climate (Worlds of Wonder) Review

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The Tree Rings' Tale: Understanding Our Changing Climate (Worlds of Wonder) ReviewJohn Fleck may have written _The Tree Rings' Tale_ for young readers, but this grown-up found it a highly readable, engaging book. Fleck builds his narrative around the science of tree rings and the scientists who research the rings and other clues to figure out climate variability in the arid West. The book is an excellent primer on climate and its most important impact on humans: water supply. It's also a page-turning reader - not a common attribute, unfortunately, of most kids' science books.
The publisher suggests ages 13 and up, but I read it to my science-and-invention-loving 8-year-old and he was rapt. (He was hooked in the first paragraph, thanks to Fleck's harrowing opening scene from John Wesley Powell's 1869 Colorado River expedition.) In addition to tree ring science, Fleck explains complexities such as forecasting, drought, weather and climate change in an easy-to-understand style that still respects kids' intelligence.
Part of what makes _The Tree Rings' Tale_ so readable is Fleck's use of actual scientists to weave his tales, which range from ancient climates to El Niño/La Niña. Much appreciated: About half of these scientists are women, a refreshing refute of the continuing gender disparity in so many science books, such as Richard Dawkins' new _Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing_, with only 3 women scientists' work featured out of 83 texts.
Fleck has an eye for the detail that will grab a young person's attention. My son was interested to learn that scientists in these different fields get to shoot down rapids, launch giant weather balloons and climb rocks. He also loved Fleck's details about some of the makeshift tools scientists use to do their work. After all, using a Pringles can to store paper straws that in turn store super-skinny tree-bore samples is just the sort of thing kid-scientists do.
I highly recommend _The Tree Rings' Tale_ to parents and science-minded readers 8 to elder, and to middle- and high school science teachers. I'm convinced that America's water-supply problems are linked in part to a lack of scientific understanding about water that begins in childhood. _The Tree Rings' Tale_ would be a strong textbook to help fill this gap, not only in the West where the book takes place, but in any state in the nation.
The Tree Rings' Tale: Understanding Our Changing Climate (Worlds of Wonder) Overview
The science of tree rings--dendroclimatology--had not been developed when John Wesley Powell made his epic voyages down the Colorado River in 1869, 1871, and 1872. Nevertheless he observed that the rising and falling of the river differed over the years and came to understand the important role these variations played in the lives of people trying to live in the West.

While Powell was braving the Colorado River's rapids, a tree in southwestern Colorado was putting on rings. In 1869 it was a modest ring. In 1871, the year Powell returned to begin his second trip, the ring was remarkably thin. In 1872, as the river rose to levels that made it almost impassable, the tree's ring was fat. We know this because, over a century later, paleoclimatologist Connie Woodhouse has studied that tree and many others in the Four Corners region, using the fat and thin rings to estimate how much water has flowed down the Colorado River each year for the past millennium.

The Tree Rings' Tale addresses one of the most important guiding principles for life in the arid West and one that scientists have long recognized: climate variability. Combining classic climatology with oceanography, meteorology, geology, archaeology, and even a touch of astronomy, this exploration offers young scientists a chance to unravel how, over the past 150 years, we have come to learn more about the natural world. Activities included after each chapter provide hands-on experience with some of the very processes scientists use to understand how our world works.

Ages 13 and up


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