MY DOG IS NOT A SCIENTIST
Yara knows she has what it takes to beat annoying rival Eddie in the school science fair, but she’s being stymied over and over by Renzo—a canine agent of chaos who bounds exuberantly into view to shred her paper airplanes in midair, bite into the lemons powering a light bulb, piddle on her grass project, and annihilate her careful arrangement of bugs and their food to deliver a joyous slurp on the cheek. “Real scientists don’t lick each other,” Eddie scoffs. As it turns out, he’s wrong: Yara despairs…until she realizes that she has seen her dog asking questions (“Can I catch this plane?”) as well as formulating hypotheses and testing them (“This lemon is food…No!”)—science in action! Her insight leads to a blue-ribbon display on the titular topic at the science fair. As a further boost to fledgling contestants or experimenters, Ellor closes with a simplified restatement of the scientific method and a bulleted list of enticing project ideas (dog related and otherwise) to explore. In Vera’s riotously messy cartoon illustrations, Yara is depicted as a hands-on, Black-presenting child, while Eddie is light-skinned and redheaded. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
