(NOTE: This book was given to me by Mind & Media as a gift from the publisher who has donated the books for the purpose of receiving reviews. If you would like to become a Reviewer for Mind and Media, click here!)

When I first heard about Nature Never Stops Talking: The Wonderful Ingenuity of Nature, I knew that I had to get my hands on a copy! Then, it happened that the author made arrangements to have his book reviewed through Mind & Media. I am so excited to have Nature Never Stops Talking in front of me!

I have always believed in a Creator, but had never heard the term "intelligent design" until I read this book. Ok, call me stupid for not having heard the term, but my last 12 years have been spent raising & homeschooling a family and I don't have the time to read much, let alone take part in fascinating, stimulating conversations with other adults - LOL!

Samuel Alibrando has a website, Nature Never Stops Talking, where you can read excerpts from his book and view the Table of Contents and other reviews. The book consists of 100 of Mr. Alibrando's articles that he wrote for a small Californian newspaper over a 10-year time period. This is a book that is difficult to put down! I personally chose to jump around the book, reading different articles from the various topics - Earth & Space, Scientific Properties, The Small Stuff, Beginnings, Plants & Trees, Insects, Specific Creatures, DNA, The Human Body, and Yeah, What About That?

Ok, back to the Intelligent Design topic ... there is so much about our world that seems unexplainable or almost too perfect. For example, I remember being fascinated as a child when I first learned that the carbon dioxide that we exhale was used by plants and they, in turn, released oxygen in the air for us to breathe!! Well, how nifty is that? Nature Never Stops Talking includes all kinds of articles showing how there is really no possible way that we humans could have designed the world around us. In his introduction, Mr. Alibrando writes the following,

"Colleges, the government and many publications market college degrees in financial terms, the emphasis on the monetary gain, with no mention of the joy of learning. The joy of learning sounds almost frivolous now compared to money ... I think it is a much better student who listens and questions ... The true student of life is always seeking .... The word "education" comes from the Latin "e duco" meaning to lead out. This is what education should do. It should lead students above and beyond the masses in both knowledge and greater powers of reason leading to appreciation and understanding."

I write the above because I think it applies so well to us homeschooling families and our pursuit for more than just a regular education for our children. This book will make our children THINK!! Read the excerpts from Nature Never Stops Talking and you'll see what I am talking about! Here is one as posted on that page:

EVERY TIME YOU SEE ICE

We are more water than anything else.
Scientists figure if they find water on another planet, they will also find life on that same planet.
Water is key to all life as we know it. It is obviously a liquid that can freeze into a solid or be heated into a vapor of steam. Few of us know the real properties of liquids. Scientists have gone to the trouble of carefully evaluating precise responses of liquids to temperature.
“Specific heat” is a term used for the specific rate at which liquids conform to temperature. Some liquids heat up quickly to boiling and cool quickly to freezing, like mercury. Of all the liquids, water takes the longest time to heat up and cool down. This is critical to life forms in water. When the air temperature suddenly changes the water of a lake or ocean or stream is more constant. Kinda lucky that water has those properties, huh?

Another principle studied in liquids is how they freeze. The colder liquid gets, the denser it becomes. That means the same weight of liquid takes less space as it gets cooler. This is why brake fluid, coolant, or transmission fluid in your car has hot and cold levels. When fluids are hot, the measuring gauge shows a higher notch. This is because liquids expand when heated. There is more space in the molecules. Of course, when the liquid is cold it is denser. It actually takes up less space.
Now I am setting this up so pay attention. Every liquid in its frozen form is HEAVIER than in its liquid form. With this in mind, ice cubes should sink to the bottom of every glass and pitcher of water. They don’t. You know ice cubes always float. Water is the only exception to this liquid rule. Other liquids freeze from the bottom up. Funny how this most important liquid has different properties than all other liquids.
I bet you are assuming this water’s exception to other liquids has beneficial effects. And why do you assume that? Because you have learned the more we research nature, the more we discover about the overwhelming details that mean life when a slight difference would mean death, sometimes to entire species. We don’t expect to find stupid ideas in nature. We expect to find greater and greater engineering and why? Because nature’s design is so perfect, precise, and unbelievably connected to dozens, hundreds, or thousands of other life systems.
That is why we want to protect nature because we know the wisdom is so much greater than our own.
Like all liquids, water gets denser as it gets colder but then, a strange and unique peculiarity occurs at 4 degrees above freezing . . . it suddenly gets LESS dense. Since it gets less dense just at 33, 34, 35, and 36 degrees Fahrenheit, when it freezes at 32 degrees, it is LESS dense than water and so it floats. So who cares? So what’s the difference?

If water did not have this particular quality, much of life as we know it would be entirely different. You see, if ice was heavier than water, no one could have ever skated on a frozen lake unless it was 100% frozen.from top to bottom. The ice would first form on the bottom of the lake. The lake would freeze from the bottom up. The water on top would become more and more shallow until we would be able to see the dead starved fish in the remaining shallow water from all the vegetation at the bottom of the lake would be cut off from the fish by ice.
Do you see how incredibly important it is that water does not conform to the properties of all other liquids?
Remember the exceptional, life-preserving property of water every time you see ice floating in your glass.

I bet you'll never think about freezing water in the same way again, will you?

I personally intend to read the snippets from this book outloud with my children each week. If we only read one a week, it would take us almost 3 years to get through the book. I want them to understand that God purposefully designed our world for many reasons. Intelligent design makes so much more sense than evolution (wait until you read the articles under DNA!) and Nature Never Stops Talking will turn your family into a family who never stops seeking other examples of intelligent design in the world around them. Bring the joy of learning back into your life by reading Nature Never Stops Talking - you won't be disappointed!

Mr. Alibrando also has a blog at HomeschoolBlogger.com and you can visit him there!

... Kris ...