Customer Reviews

The Fairy-Land of Science (Yesterday's Classics)

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For me, a researcher, this book is very inspiring, because (i) the author was not a scientist, but she can understand the topic so well that the book is attractive to me; (ii) the book tells me many pieces of basic knowledge around our daily life, which honestly I do not know well; (iii) this book re-makes me be interested in popular scientific books, which I once loved to read when I was young.

The Fairy-Land of Science is a wonderful book, but this particular printing of it (the cover shows a lovely color photograph of a bee on a pink flower cluster) leaves out all of the 63 illustrations. For example, Buckley writes, "We shall not have gone many yards before we see impressions of plants in the shale, like those in this specimen (Fig. 47)..." There is no Figure 47, nor are there any of the Figures to which she refers. Oddly enough, it appears that nobody involved in the printing of this book even bothered to read it. Perhaps the Figures were left out intentionally, but being a science book, the illustrations are hardly optional details, and in that case, one would think the references to them would also be removed. "Book jungle" appears to be the printer responsible for this version. Every book on their order form, at the back of the book, as far as my knowledge extends, is a public domain book (as is Fairy-Land of Science). An additional lesser objection I have is that the text is 6" wide, which I find harder to deal with than the standard 4-5" but this may just be a personal preference.

This book needs tags: Waldorf education, Waldorf methods, Waldorf science elementary, Waldorf nature stories

A classic of children's science teaching published in 1882 apparently. On a very cursory first glance in Google books, Buckley voices the exact tone desirable in Waldorf education; that is, an imaginative approach to science facts, based in reality but cognizant of etheric, fairy and spiritual forces. In a phrase we call this "making science come alive."

Whole-child method elementary teachers who do all their lower elementary science teaching thru storytelling, will appreciate this. Sadly this child-friendly "voice" in the field of science was extinguished in the U.S. after about 1975.

This book may be a valuable science reader book for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade children who enjoy science.

I am a scientist, and I regret that the American high-school students are hardly taught the basic knowledge of science - maybe some biology, but certainly not basic physics nor basic chemistry. Therefore I bought this book hoping to give it to someone young. Unfortunately, I found this book to be an uninteresting compilation of various scientific concepts, not capable of stirring the scientific interest in anyone.