Lightning (Nature in Action)

There's kind of a long story with this book and I. I remember checking this out of the library constantly when I was in grade school in the mid-nineties as I was always fascinated by weather like lightning and tornados. I mean the fact that I like the 1996 movie Twister should be no surprise. Anyway, I did not know how exactly how new this book was back then (I was looking at it back in 1993-1995 and it was released in 1992) so that was kind of surprising when looking at it now. The photography still holds up in my opinion, the only thing that bugs me is I wish this was hardback like the one in my youth. However, I can't really hold that against it as I'm fairly certain that copy was converted into a hardback for use in the library all those years ago to fight against wear and tear. I still wish I could find the other book I loved back then that was about electricity (only remember some fragments of that book and it's not enough to track that book down sadly) but rediscovering this is more than enough honestly.

As a middle school teacher, I have successfully used Lightning by Stephen Kramer with 6th & 7th grade students. I'm sure this book would contribute well to a weather unit in science; I, however, used this book for teaching Language Arts. First I used this book as a way to introduce nonfiction as a genre. We discussed the photography (which is wonderful) and other features typical of nonfiction. Then I used this book later in the year to model descriptive writing and figurative language. The introduction to the book is very well-written and uses several descriptive devices. I love to point out to the students that this is informational text, yet does not use "boring" language like many textbooks. Therefore, the students try to emulate the same techniques in their expository writing. The only reason I didn't rate this book with 5 stars is because it is too long to read aloud in one class period. I highly recommend this book to all middle school teachers!

An accessible introduction to the phenomena of lighting for middle-schoolers. Excellent diagrams and photographs.

Wonderful book! I use this all the time with my students!

A great science library addition!