Rating: WORTHY!
From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
Friends, red kangaroos, children, lend me your engineers! Having just seen Fantasy Island at the movie theater, (the plane the plane - yes they did use that phrase and the movie was great!), how could I not want to review this book with such a bold and maybe even a teensy bit reckless title?
This was a short and fun little book about a kangaroo who wants to fly, but who can't seem to get off the ground. She seeks out author Chris Ferrie who has a doctorate in applied mathematics and who is a senior lecturer at the University of Technology in Sydney. Dr Chris explains the four forces involved in flight (drag, gravity, lift - or was it Uber? - no it was lift!, and thrust), and does so in simple terms. The lift component to flight is the one that's most often misunderstood, even in textbooks, but the explanations here are kept simple and straight-forward.
Red Kangaroo still can't manage to propel herself into the air, but she gets to fly in an airplane! This was a colorful and easy book, useful for introducing young children to a complicated idea without straining young minds. Hopefully a few who read this will become engineers and make some wonderful things because their interest in science was piqued by books like this one, I commend it as a worthy read.
