Author: Chris Ferrie

Publisher: Sourcebooks Inc

My only complaint about this book is the misleading title: this book is not for babies. This is the sort of quirky book that both children and adults can learn something about science and (supposedly) complicated physics theories in a ridiculously simple manner apt for “babies”. This book is by far my favourite and the most informative children board book about “rainbow” that I have ever seen.

Like most other Chris Ferrie’s series of “babies” science book, the book begins with a single circle. “This is a ball”, it says. Using an object, a red ball, Chris started to tell us how it reflects red light and absorbs blue and green light. He then talks about how a “clear” ball is formed (all colours pass through it), and how all colours can combine to become “white” light. Chris then tells us about how light travels in straight line until it hits something. The light can be reflected or retracted (it doesn’t tell us in what circumstances it will get reflected or refracted, let’s hope our children won’t ask us the details.)

It then leads us to a favourite thing of many young kids: rainbow! When white light is refracted, there will be a dispersion (turning into separate colours), which is essentially how a rainbow is formed when a white light hits a raindrop. How I wish we have such similar books in our school time. It would have made learning so much fun!

Chris did not stop there. He then talks about rainbow colours, and how a double rainbow is formed (when light reflected two times inside a raindrop). This is probably the only children board book that will get into details like reversed colour order on second rainbow, and uses words like “spectrum of colours”. Awesome.

2-year old little-AJ has no idea what this book is all about and doesn’t show much interest in those balls and weird colours, but I will sure read this to him again one day when he is a bit older.

P/S: this is a library copy

Sue’s rating: 5/5