As it’s science week we want to find some good books to get primary school aged children excited about science – non fiction and fiction please!

It’s never too young to start learning about how the world around us in all ways. And that includes simple introductions to some of the principles about the everyday science that surrounds us.

How science is shown in books ranges from text books, or near text book approaches for home use, to the use of stories to bring the subject to life and to make it easier to understand.

Understanding the living world is the easiest component of science to get to grips with. Given the threats to our planet, it is also the one that children need to learn about from very young indeed.

It is 25 years since Dear Greenpeace, Simon James’s classic picture about the environment was first published. It has just been reissued this month which shows that the lessons from it still need to be learnt! An ecological fantasy, Dear Greenpeace is a told in letters to Greenpeace from a little girl who is worried about the whale that is living in her pond. Greenpeace explain that whales need more space and that they are migratory, meaning that they travel a long way every day. Emily’s imaginary story to herself and the scientific replies that Greenpeace give her provide a perfect basis for asking questions about the environment and especially about animals and freedom. Knowing how everyday plants and trees grow and how they provide a habitat for all kinds of creatures or what kind of creatures live on the sea shore brings being outdoors alive for children who may not be familiar with it on an everyday basis.

Nicola Davies’s A First book of Nature takes children into the outdoors to look at everything from stars to beaches and also at the more familiar worlds of woods and ponds. Beautifully illustrated by Mark Hearld and with a text which includes poetry, it includes the science lightly concentrating instead on celebrating nature and its wonderfulness.

With the exploration of space so much in the news, Michelle Robinson’s Goodnight Spaceman (illustrated by Nick East) is a fantasy story about two space-mad boys who gets whisked into space as a bedtime adventure is a good place to start exploring the topic. The book includes a message from Tim Peake which adds a touch of authenticity.

Although still full of pictures, Dominic Walliman and Ben Newman’s Professor Astrocat’s Atomic Adventure packs in a lot more science and this time, as might be guessed by the title, it is physics. Just as Nicola Davies makes nature part of everyday life, so Professor Astro Cat explains that physics is all around us. The wind and the sun, the forces that we use to push and pull, energy from a host of sources, magnetism, light and dark and how they come about – all is explain in busy illustrations and short explanations.

Closer to home, it is always worth knowing more about the human body. Apart from anything, the more you know about your body the more likely you are to be able to look after. Robert Winston’s Utterly Amazing Human Body is packed-full of scientific information presented in an interesting and entertaining way. There are flaps to lift and slides to pull to reveal what happens right inside the body and what the major organs do. And there are pop-ups which help to understand the complex structure of it all. The interactive presentation makes it fun to find out and makes the information easier to understand.

Studying bones might seem a bit gruesome but teenager Jake McGowan-Lowe became a bone detective at a very young age and has put his knowledge of his amazing collection of bones in Jake’s Bones. Jake’s brilliant introduction to bones includes pictures from his own collection showing some of his favourites such as the skeletons of Vulpy the fox and Oscar the hedgehog. Jake also takes a look at dinosaur bones which are the most accurate way of finding at everything possible the long-extinct creatures.

While dinosaurs appear to be timeless favourites, there are some living things which are rarely loved. Beetles are among them. But all that could change with MG Leonard’s brilliant new novel, Beetle Boy. The story of how the life of unhappy Darcus is forever changed by the arrival of the awesomely large and awesomely clever beetle called Baxter is a wonderful adventure but it may also make all readers see beetles in a new light. It will certainly teach them something about the very special and important role beetles play in the world.

Got books to recommend on this subject? Tell us on Twitter@GdnChildrensBks or by emailing childrens.books@theguardian.com and we’ll add your ideas to this blog. You can use the same email address to ASK the Book Doctor a books related question.

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