It’s easy to find nonfiction picture books about animals. It’s trickier to find ones that tackle a broader range of science concepts. I loved the way both Just Right and Snowman-Cold=Puddle examined more abstract concepts.\

Just Right is an exploration of what we know about planets around other stars and how astronomers search for them. It’s loaded with facts and information-rich sidebars. The text itself is straight exposition: what we know about Earth, how we categorize other planets, how we find those planets, and what we’re looking for.

But, in one of those wonderful marriages that can happen only in picture books, the illustrations add new layers. We see, through the pictures, a girl and her family going on a day-long outing to a science museum. I loved that the narrative part of the story came in the illustrations, not the text!

In yet another layer, the illustrations show the girl having otherworldly experiences (or maybe coming to understand fantastic but abstract concepts?) that seem to involve her alone: we see her standing on the edge of a chasm reaching down to the core of the earth while her parents and sister look at a museum sign; she looks, entranced, at a night sky while her family heads into a planetarium; she swelters next to a sun that is consuming a too-close planet. I think those fantastic illustrations would have been the ones that caught my imagination and delighted me the most.

It is rare to find nonfiction picture books about physical science concepts, and this one uses the conventions of picture books brilliantly to explore a fascinating topic.

Snowman-Cold=Puddle explores the science concept of the changing season, paired with delightful word “equations” that give you a new way to look at the world. Some of the equations use addition and some–the ones that suggest actions that happen repeatedly or to a mass of things–use multiplication. So the books has “breeze+kite=ballet” and “bumblebees x flowers=blueberries.”

Every page also has a few sentences explaining the science concept linked to the word equation. The explanations cover hibernating animals, migrating animals, blooming plants, warming air, and refraction of light.

The art, by Micha Archer, is–as her art always is!–luminous and full of wonderful details. I love how rich her illustrations are and how the invite the reader to settle in and explore, spread by spread.

Just Right: Searching for the Goldilocks Planet, by Curtis Manley, illustrated by Jessica Lanan. (Roaring Brook: 2019).

Snowman-Cold=Puddle by Laura Purdie Salas, illustrated by Micha Archer. (Charlesbridge: 2019).