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This guide, though suggestive of many potential connections to
literature, resulted in few good finds. A book about the nineteenth
century army surgeon who studied a patient with a healed bullet
hole in his stomach reveals much concrete information about stomach
acid and other items of interest. After participating in this
unit, your students will be primed to the challenge of “neutralizing”
a solution and will enjoy a picture book about a woman who tries
to make her salty coffee drinkable. Finally, a collection of humorous
poems about food and eating is certainly relevant to this unit—all
it takes is smelling a classroom where cabbage juice was made
to begin the poetic flow in all of us.
Doctor Beaumont and the Man with the
Hole in His Stomach
June 29, 2020
The Lady Who Put Salt in Her Coffee
Top Secret
Doctor Beaumont and the Man with the
Hole in His Stomach
by Beryl and Samuel Epstein
Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, New York. 1978
Grades: 4–6
Interesting experiments about digestion are described in this
army surgeon’s biography. In the 1820s he had a patient with
a bullet hole in his stomach. By inserting a tube, the doctor
was able to directly observe and monitor the circulation of gastric
juices and bile fluids. The surgeon published a book on these
experiments, including findings on acidity in the stomach.
Return to titles list.
June 29, 2020
by David Wiesner
Clarion Books, Houghton Mifflin, New York. 1992
Grades: 3–6
The science project of Holly Evans takes an extraordinary
turn—or does it? This highly imaginative and beautifully
illustrated book not only has a central experimental component,
but ranges outward into the world of extraterrestrials. Holly’s
careful preparations, analysis of results, and dawning awareness
that the giant vegetables that are landing on Earth are not the
results of her experiment have a lot to say about scientific pursuits,
interspersed with great humor and lots of giant vegetables, including
cabbages!
Return to titles list.
The Lady Who Put Salt in Her Coffee
by Lucretia Hale
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, San Diego. 1989
Grades: K–6
When Mrs. Peterkin accidentally puts salt in her coffee, the
entire family embarks on an elaborate quest to find someone to
make it drinkable again. A visit to a chemist, an herbalist, and
a wise woman result in a solution, but not without having tried
some wild experiments first.
Return to titles list.
Top Secret
by John R. Gardiner; illustrated by Marc Simont
Little, Brown & Co., Boston. 1984
Grades: 4–7
Humorous saga of a fourth grader’s search for the secret
of “human photosynthesis.” Although his science teacher
instructs him not to pursue his efforts and orders a science project
on lipstick instead, he succeeds in transforming himself and then
his teacher into human organisms with plant-like characteristics.
The intervention of undercover government agents adds suspense.
The plot is an imaginative use of material about plants, human
and plant nutrition, chemistry, chemical reactions, and the process
of scientific investigation.
Return to titles list.
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