Description: "When Jane and Niko gather worms to populate their outdoor worm house, they devise a series of experiments to ensure the habitat is to their new pets' liking"-- Provided by publisher.
Review Quotes: Two children employ the scientific method to find out what their wriggly new pets are trying to tell them.
Noting that the 10 earthworms the kids have collected in a cardboard box have crawled to the corners, Niko wonders if they're trying to say that they want out. "That's one hypothesis," says older sib Jane. "Let's ask." The "asking" involves a series of experiments--covering half the box to see if the worms like shade, adding dirt to part of the bottom to see if they prefer dirt, and taping drawings to the sides to see if they're drawn to art--and then observing and discussing the results. One final trial, cutting holes along the bottom edge with help from their mom, provides a definitive result: The next morning, the worms have all vanished. The children are disappointed, but "Now we know." Leaving the two to conduct further dialogues with a pill bug they're cheered to find in their box, Levine concludes her clearly laid out text with simple guidelines for young scientists eager to design safe, methodical animal studies of their own--plus nods to the iconic zoologists after whom she named her duo, Jane Goodall and Niko Tinbergen. An's light-skinned figures all sport big, dewy eyes that lend sweet overtones to the illustrations.
An artfully simple introduction to science's most valuable research tool.
--Kirkus Reviews