Book excerpt: Flowers bloom and start producing seeds. Trees covered with fresh green leaves are making food for themselves. Young animals born in the spring are striking out on their own. The days are long and sunny, and kids head back outdoors after supper to play. It’s summertime! This colorful, fact-filled title gives readers a chance not only to learn about summer, but also to develop their powers of observation and critical thinking. Fun activities, such as recording changes in temperature, precipitation, and the length of days in a weather notebook, give readers a chance to gain insights beyond just facts and figures. Expertly crafted to meet early elementary reading and science curriculum standards, How Do You Know It's Summer? introduces young readers to science concepts and the two fundamental components of scientific inquiry--making observations, and drawing inferences from those observations.