As they have every year since 1973, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and the Children’s Book Council released their list of Outstanding Science Trade Books this month. Reviewers from the two organizations aim to select “high quality, engaging, and scientifically accurate books” from publishers of books for children and young people.

According to NSTA, this year’s list “covers everything from frogs to cars and takes students from the frigid Antarctic all the way to sunny Kenya.” The 2009 list is available online at http://www.nsta.org/publications/ostb/ostb2009.aspx?lid=exp.

Of the 39 books on the K-12 list this year, 23 are recommended for readers in the intermediate grades (6-8). The reviewers note that indicated reading levels are intended as guidelines and are not meant to limit the potential use of the books. Often, the reading levels of the middle school books overlap with grades 9-12 levels. Relevant science education standards are indicated for all books.

Titles marked with a “star” emblem are called Selectors’ Choices, books that individual panel members expressed particular enthusiasm for.

The two biographies on the list for middle school readers are Selectors’ Choices: A Life in the Wild: George Schaller’s Struggle to Save the Last Great Beasts and Emperors of the Ice: A True Story of Disaster and Survival in the Antarctic. Emperors… is about zoologists who went to Antarctica in the early 1900s trying to prove their theory that birds evolved directly from dinosaurs.

Another book related to the search for clues in icy regions of the world is Bodies From the Ice: Melting Glaciers and the Recovery of the Past by James M. Deem.

Books about animals are plentiful in publishing and on the list. Animals on the Edge: Science Races to Save Species Threatened With Extinction by Sandra Pobst is called “a strong portrayal of the nature of science” as it focuses on scientists who are studying the species. A Selectors’ Choice award goes to a book about a threatened species that is making a comeback, When the Wolves Returned: Restoring Nature’s Balance in Yellowstone by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent.

Three of National Geographic’s Face to Face books — with cheetahs, elephants, and lions — were named to the list. Books about predators and praying mantises along with books about animals’ eggs and wings are also on the list.

Health science gets four books on the list, dealing with such subjects as sleep, human anatomy, eating disorders, and drug-resistant diseases.

The outstanding books are grouped by category, including archaeology, anthropology, and paleontology; biography; earth and space science; environment and ecology; life science; physical science; and technology and engineering.