My Light by Molly Bang

Bang, Molly. (2004). My Light. New York: The Blue Sky Press An Imprint of Scholastic Inc.

Grade Level:
I would recommend this book for students in grades K-3.

Author:
Molly Bang has written a number of children’s books. She recently started writing science content children’s books to help raise awareness about environmental issues. This book was a Noatable Children’s Book for 2005.

Summary:
This book explains how electricity comes from the sun. It starts by looking at a city at night and talks about the lights. They look like stars. Their light did come from a star, the sun. The author discusses clouds and how energy falls as rain. The water flows down stream, and may eventually be stopped by a dam. Humans use this energy from the water to create electricity.
The author then discusses wind energy. The sun heats the earth. The warm air rises. The cool air pours in, thus creating wind. The wind can be used to create electricity with turbines.
Fossil fuels are discussed next. Plants use the sun to make food, storing energy inside them. When some of these plants die they are buried for millions and millions of years. They then turn to coal and can be burned to create electricity.
Energy can also be captured in solar panels. These panels capture energy directly from the sun. This energy is used to create electricity.

Standards:
Science
-Physical Science
-Life Science
-Earth and Space Science
-Science and Technology
-Science in Personal and Social Perspectives

Illustrations:
Molly Bang also did the illustrations for this book. I loved these illustrations. They were colorful and so detailed. The book does not tell what medium was used to create these illustrations. The best way I can describe them are as paintings and maybe some computer generated art work. The illustrations flow with the text, and they help further explain the text.

Access Features:
*About this book

How I would use the book in the classroom:
This book would be great to teach students about electricity, and how it works. I would also have the students do further research on the author’s website. There are so many different aspects that the students could do further research on.

My response to the book:
I really enjoyed reading this book. The illustrations blew me away. They were gorgeous. I liked how she related electricity as coming from the sun. I have never thought about many of the points she brings out. This book did a great job of connecting all the pieces.

Related Texts:
*Common Ground: The Water, Earth, and Air We Share by Molly Bang
*Dawn by Molly Bang
*www.mollybang.com

Other:
The end pages of this book look like the stars in the sky. The title page has a sun with ripples of energy flowing out and on into the book. The color of the font switches from yellow, to white, to black according to the color of the page. The sun’s energy is represented by yellow in the illustrations. This representation can be found on every page in the book.