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I don’t know about you, but in our family, 99% of bedtime reading involves fiction.

Non fiction, or information books, rarely get chosen to share a cosy cuddle just before the kids go to sleep. But Tiny: The Invisible World of Microbes by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Emily Sutton has recently helped us break the mould.

You want to share an amazing journey with your kids? You want stunning illustrations to enjoy pouring over together? You want to finish the book with a sigh of satisfaction, a sense of coming full circle and feeling that your world and understanding of it just got a little bit richer? Well, Tiny has been doing all of that for us, and more.

An exploration of life so small you need a microscope to see it, Davies and Sutton take a few clever hooks, and quickly reel you in. Through a perfect fusion of words and images they explain the scale and scope of microscopic life, not only powerfully, but also with real beauty. Judicious use of mind boggling facts (for example, how many microbes you might find in a teaspoon of soil) leave lots of space for awe, wonder and curiosity, without ever overloading a young reader/listener.

Click to be taken to a photo of the same microbe illustrated here by Emily Sutton so you can see how beautifully she has picked up the details.

Davies has composed a beautiful “story” in the sense that there is a beginning, middle and end, with a dramatic turn at one point (what bad microbes can do to you) and a reassuring, rewarding ending where different strands come together. Sutton’s detailed, earthy-toned illustrations are clever and sprinkled with humour. She can pull of both minutia and epic vistas with equal skill.

A glorious introduction to the variety of microbes, and the impact they have on our lives, this stunning book is not only a delight to read and look at, it will leave parents and children asking each other more questions, and wanting to further explore the unseen world around them.

To “see” microbes at work we decided to give making compost in a bottle a try. Here’s the recipe we followed:

‘Ingredients’

Method
1. Cut around the bottle neck to form a flip top lid (the bottle neck alone will not be large enough to pour the ingredients into the bottle)
2. Layer the ingredients in a repeating pattern until you reach the flip top lid level. The pattern we followed was soil, fruit/vegetable scraps, soil, newspaper, soil, grass clippings, soil, fruit vegetable scraps etc. Each layer was 3-5 cm deep.
3. Moisten the contents of the bottle with a little bit of water.
4. Tape the top of the bottle closed.
5. Mark the top of the compost on the side of the bottle.

6. Place your mini composters in a sunny spot.
7. Once a week observe any changes eg in the level or appearance of compost. Depending on local conditions in 3-6 weeks you’ll see a marked change in the contents of the bottle.

After 5 weeks we decided to open up our bottles, the level of compost having dropped by about 10 cm.

The newspaper was nowhere to be seen, many of the vegetable scraps had disappeared (only the larger chunks of carrot were still visible), and whilst the grass was still visible, it had clearly changed.

I tried to convince my girls that what they had just observed was a magic trick: leftover kitchen and garden waste along with our daily newspaper went in, and out came (something well on its way to being) nutrient-rich fertilizer..

I have to admit, this magic trick didn’t have the instant wow factor of some magic tricks they’ve seen in their life times, but the potion making aspect of the original layering of ingredients, and the clearly changed form of the bottle contents did pique their curiosity.

We didn’t have music on whilst making our compost, but here are some fun songs that go well with a book all about microbes:

If I were based in a school doing this compost activity, I’d definitely look into making this Compost Musical with my class.

Other activities which would go well with reading Tiny: The Invisible World of Microbes include:

What non fiction books have you shared recently with your kids?

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book from the publishers.

Every Monday is a celebration of all things non-fiction in the online children’s book world. If you’d like to read more reviews of children’s non-fiction books, do take a look at the dedicated children’s non-fiction blog: http://nonfictionmonday.wordpress.com/