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STEM Tuesday– Chemistry– In the Classroom

By on February 10, 2026   /   Chemistry, STEM Tuesday   /   Leave a comment

Cover of How Do Molecules Stay Together?How Do Molecules Stay Together?
by Madeline J. Hayes, illustrated by Srimalie Bassani

How Do Molecules Stay Together? is a picture book that introduces readers to some basic chemistry concepts. This could be a good read-aloud as an introduction to chemistry, although I suspect older students may find the call-and-response phrases a little too childish for their liking.

 

Marie Curie for Kids
by Amy M. O’Quinn

This is a book that’s great for readers who love history and activities. Follow Marie Curie’s life from a bright, young girl in occupied Poland through her Nobel prize winning discoveries. This book is packed from activities that explore a wide range of topics, including geography, culture, and science. I read this book in its e-book version, which had some formatting issues that occasionally made it challenging to absorb. This could be an opportunity to explore those areas with an activity. (See below)

The Radium Girls
by Kate Moore

What happens when people are exposed to light waves emitted from radioactive material? That’s what this book covers, by telling the stories of a group of women who worked with radium. This is not an easy read emotionally, but it tells a very important story. It’s referenced in Marie Curie for Kids, and would be a great follow-on book for that one.

 

Bonus Books:

Werewolf, dressed as an astronaut, standing on a scale. Scale reads: "Matter Meter: 100% Werewolf"Werewolves and States of Matter
by Janet Slingerland, illustrated by Angel Mosquito

For readers who love graphic novels and/or werewolves, this book provides a great introduction to chemistry. It explores the concept of matter, what states it can exist in, and how matter transforms from one state to another.

 

Cartoon character appears to create molecular structure out of sand with the help of another character with a bucket.Explore Atoms and Molecules! (with 25 Great Projects)
by Janet Slingerland, illustrated by Matt Aucoin

If you’re looking for activities that help explore atoms and molecules, be sure to check out this book. It covers lots of different chemistry topics, including atomic structure, the periodic table, and chemical reactions. There’s even a section that introduces readers to Lewis dot diagrams, a great way to visualize how atoms combine.

 

As always, there are lots of different things that can be done with these books. Be sure to check out the activities provided in the books. Some of the books also have educator materials or informative websites associated with them. Here are links to some of them:

There is a website dedicated to The Radium Girls. There is an educator guide linked on this page of the site: https://www.theradiumgirls.com/the-radium-girls-young-readers

The Atoms and Molecules page of my website has some links of interest: http://janetsbooks.com/atoms-and-molecules

There is a classroom guide and a free downloadable activity on the Nomad Press site: https://nomadpress.net/nomadpress-books/explore-atoms-molecules

Some of this month’s books are older, and the web links provided in them no longer work. However, since the authors thought they were worthy of inclusion, exploring them might be a good exercise. If a link no longer works, can you find the same information on another reliable website or page?

Here are some other ideas for activities.

Create a Timeline

As mentioned in the book descriptions, I had some difficulties with the book formatting in Marie Curie for Kids. This was particularly true for the timeline provided in the book. In order to better visualize the timeline, create one of your own. This could be done on a single sheet of paper, or it could be constructed so it wraps around an entire room. This can also be an opportunity to explore the use of technology in presenting a timeline, whether it’s created with a graphic tool like Canva, a slideshow like PowerPoint, or whatever your favorite tool is.

Students can choose what should be placed on the timeline, based on the books they’ve read. Including pictures or illustrations of the events helps everyone visualize the events better. This provides lots of opportunities to practice research skills. This is also an opportunity for students to work together to create it.

Here are some ideas of things that could be included on the timeline:

  • Major life events for the people involved in the science (the Curies, Mendeleev, Bohr, etc.).
  • Important discoveries, including elements, atomic structure, effects of elements, etc.
  • Key dates related to products using chemicals.
  • Major world events like the World Wars.

Get Messy!

Chemistry can be one of the messiest of the scientific disciplines. The books on this month’s book list include lots of experiments that explore chemical reactions. Here are a few popular experiments:

Elephant Toothpaste:

Erupting Soda:

Making slime:

Get Thoughtful

Scientific discoveries often have unintended consequences. The stories of the Curies and the Radium Girls are perfect examples of this. Here is an article from the Society of Physics Studies and the American Institute of Physics that addresses this topic:  https://students.aip.org/radiations/discoveries-unintended-consequences-and-the-values-of-science. After reading it, have some discussions about the topic. Does the scientific process help to address this?

This opens up the topic of the scientific process. This website from UC Berkeley has lots of information on this topic: https://undsci.berkeley.edu/understanding-science-101/how-science-works

Explore (Largely Unsung) Scientists

Marie Curie was the first women to achieve many accomplishments. There are other groups of people who have historically faced huge obstacles to achieving things like college degrees and scientific discoveries. Often, discoveries made by women and minorities were attributed to others.

Explore some of the underrepresented people who have made great discoveries related to chemistry.

Each student could explore a different scientist and incorporate it into the timeline from above.

February is Black History Month. Here are a few lists of scientists to explore (there is some overlap between the lists):

March is Women’s History Month. Here are some lists of women scientists to explore:

Woman with short brown hair and glasses, smiling.Janet Slingerland has written over 2 dozen books for young readers, including Werewolves and States of Matter and Explore Atoms and Molecules! (with 25 Great Projects). To find out more about Janet and her books, check out her website: http://janetsbooks.com

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Author Interview – Anna James – Alice with a Why

By on February 9, 2026   /   Author Interviews, kidlit, New Releases   /   1 Comment
Alice With a Why by #1 New York Times bestselling author Anna James (Pages & Co., Chronicles of Whetherwhy), illustrated by Matthew Land. AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE BOOKS ARE SOLD!

cover of Alice with a Why featuring a nest with book print in the middle with a cutout of the main character AlycePicture of Author Anna James - woman with long curly red hair

In this enchanting standalone retelling of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice’s granddaughter, Alyce—with a Y—finds herself tumbling down into a Wonderland at war. The once-whimsical world is now divided between the Sun King and the Queen of the Moon, and it’s up to Alyce, guided by familiar characters like the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat, to restore balance and find her way home.
As Kirkus raves, “This homage sparkles. Delightful in every way.” A pitch-perfect blend of literary nostalgia and fresh adventure, Alice With a Why both honors Lewis Carroll’s classic and reimagines it for a new generation.

 

Tell us why you decided to revisit Alice in Wonderland? Why was this story so inspiring for you?

I’ve always been fascinated by the original book – it’s such an important book for children’s literature and there aren’t many books that are as foundational to the collective imagination. The mix of wordplay and nonsense with so many iconic and beloved characters make it a really fun world to play in, but the relative lack of plot in the original allows a lot of space to create your own stories within Wonderland. 

I really enjoyed your mix of old characters (from the original Alice in Wonderland) with the new. How did you go about deciding who would be included from the original story and also what might compliment them with the new characters?

So firstly, I knew I wanted to only use characters that appeared in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (as opposed to Through the Looking Glass) so I had that list. And some were obvious like the White Rabbit and the Hatter who feel very integral to Wonderland, and I think people would hope to see. I really wanted to use the Caterpillar, but I only worked that out when a literal bookworm ate one of my books of poetry. Seeing all the tracks through the poems gave me the idea to make him a bookworm who has started smoking poetry instead of whatever he was smoking originally…! The main new character is the Fox, to whom my Alyce is sent, and who becomes her guide through Wonderland. This is a key difference between the original and my version, as Alice doesn’t really have anyone helping her; the Fox, while very much of Wonderland and its nonsense, is a steadier presence than anything that exists in the original.

So much of Alice in Wonderland is all the fun language choices, and you’ve captured that same feeling here beautifully. What was your writing process like to capture some of that essence of the original writing in Alice with a Why?

Thank you! This was both the hardest and the most enjoyable part of the whole book. I spent a lot of time just reading and rereading the original, and I also listened to a lot of nonsense poems on audio while wandering around the woods near where I live to try to get into those rhythms. I had a big list of idioms pinned above my desk as inspiration, too. I also really relied on Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice, which is a great resource for understanding all of Carroll’s references, so I went back to that often to try to sort of reverse-engineer that Wonderland feel. And then it was just a lot of trial and error—rewriting sentences until they had the right feel.

Some of the most vivid aspects of your story and the original is the setting. I think the setting is so important to your story, and I would love to know how you thought up the different settings in your story?

Wonderland really allows for a lot of flexibility; you can put almost anything in there.

Two of the key settings are the palaces of the Sun King and the Queen of the Moon, who are at war with each other. The Sun King was heavily inspired by Louis XIV of France, who was known as the Sun King and adopted the sun emblem as a symbol of power. He was also the king who transformed the Palace of Versailles and built the Hall of Mirrors, which is, of course, very Wonderland-coded. Accordingly, my Sun King also holds court in a hall of mirrors, although his courtiers are birds.

I took a lot of inspiration from history more generally; the place where Alice and Alyce live is inspired by Wrest Park, a stately home in Bedfordshire, England, that was used as a hospital during World War One.

What do you hope readers will take away from Alice with a Why (despite the ambiguous ending)?

As the last line suggests, I’m a big believer in letting readers take from books what they will but I certainly hope that readers who’ve lost someone will take some comfort from my Alyce’s journey through her grief at losing her father during the war. I think above all, I hope that young readers in particular come away feeling that words and language are a lot of fun. 

What are some of your favorite middle grade novels and why do you like them so much? 

My favourite middle grade author is Diana Wynne Jones who writes brilliantly quirky fantasy middle grade. My favourite classic is probably Anne of Green Gables, I think Anne Shirley is perhaps the greatest fictional creation of all time. More recently I’ve enjoyed reading Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell, Dragonborn by Struan Murray and Greenwild by Pari Thomson. 

Now that your book is out in the world, what’s the next step for you?

As we speak, I’m currently on tour in the U.S. to talk about the book. I love touring and meeting readers and booksellers! Once I’m home, I’ll be editing the third book in my Chronicles of Whetherwhy series (the second one is coming out in the spring in the U.S.), and then beginning to draft in earnest my second Wonderland book! I always wanted to write two to mirror the two Wonderland novels that Carroll wrote, so I’m excited to get properly started on that. I’m also working on my debut adult novel, a rom-com called Good Fortunes, inspired by Pride and Prejudice and coming out in spring 2027!

Is there anything else you want to share about Alice with a Why for our audience of teachers, librarians, and middle grade authors?

Alice With a Why is rooted in a deep love and admiration for the original, which I hope shows. I also hope that readers who already have a relationship with Wonderland enjoy returning there, and that readers who haven’t yet find a bit of magic there and are inspired to seek out Carroll’s original two books.

AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE BOOKS ARE SOLD!
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Meet Author Matt Landis

By on February 6, 2026   /   Articles, Author Interviews   /   1 Comment
Author Matthew Landis

By day, Matt Landis is a middle school social studies teacher in Warrington, Pennsylvania; but by night (and, well, sometimes also by day…), he’s the author of some high adventure, high stakes, middle grade books. 

 

Matt’s National Archives Hunters series features 10-year-old twins who become unofficial “consultants” who assist the FBI’s Art Crime Team to help find and recover stolen relics from history and beyond. Throughout the series, there is also an ongoing hunt for an elusive criminal mastermind.

Book cover with two kids -- one boy and one girl -- running down the steps of the US Capitol. The title says National Archive Hunters Capitol Chase.Book Cover with pink and orange sky background. Three kids -- one boy and two girls -- are in the foreground with the Statue of Liberty behind them. The title says National Archive Hunters Eternal Flame

 

Two books in this series are now available: National Archive Hunters: Capitol Chase and National Archive Hunters: Eternal Flame. In the former, twins Ike and Iris are in mad pursuit of a thief who’s stealing valuable artifacts; in the latter, the twins race from D.C. to Paris to New York to save one of America’s most iconic treasures.  

 

All this running around is reminiscent of the author! Matt Landis has been on a whirlwind RV tour, taking his author-visit-extravaganza across the country. We were lucky to catch up with him for this interview!

 

Matt, we know a lot of teachers, so we have to start by finding out how a teacher is able to embark upon a cross-country author tour.

 

Two years ago, I hatched a secret plan to quit my job for a year and travel America with my wife and four kids in an RV. When I confessed this epic adventure to my bride, Kristy, she said, “No.” 

To be fair, her main concern was valid: money. I’m a full-time middle school history teacher who writes middle grade books in the morning and late at night and on my 18-minute teacher lunch. Kristy, also a teacher, works part time at a PreK. We couldn’t exactly quit our jobs or afford an RV (much less drive one); my wife, though a woman of great patience, wasn’t keen on sharing a cramped living space for a prolonged period with our ten and eight year olds, much less our five-year-old twins. 

 

And yet, last January to June, we pulled that adventure off. I cajoled a sabbatical out of my school district, found a used RV, YouTubed everything on the Internet, and built a seventy-school book tour to fund the work/vacation/adventure. From sea to shining sea we drove, laughed, cried, clogged the tiny RV toilet, and drank in the amazing America I’ve spent nearly two decades teaching about. Across twenty-five states, I ran hundreds of assemblies, high-fived forty-thousand kids, ran book orders, slung product, and met the most incredible educators. We hiked through canyons, sand boarded down desert dunes, stared up at Redwoods, gawked at blackout skies, and fed wild donkeys in South Dakota. We held a gator in Florida, where there are essentially no rules. We attended a rodeo in San Antonio, a state where four-year-old children regularly ride wild sheep in an event known as “Mutton Bustin’.” We survived a spring snow squall in New Mexico. We played tag on the Utah salt flats. We ate a lot of tacos. 

 

That sounds like quite an adventure! You mentioned recording your travel escapades on Substack. Tell us a little more about that. 

 

My biggest fear was forgetting the small moments, so I decided to narrate the adventure in a Substack podcast fabulously titled The Great American RV Family Book Tour. The goal was to capture the planning, launch, highs, lows, as well as the mundane that together make up a true adventure. Episodes featured locations and guests — friends we reunited with along the way, family we stayed with, my kids, Kristy. Production quality grew, helped by my decision to outline episodes instead of winging it. I finally had a great reason to buy some cool sound equipment.

 

What motivated you to use this medium, and what other platforms have you explored?

 

Little did I know that this travel pod experiment would be the starting point of another project — a student-centered history podcast for teachers, parents, and homeschool co-ops.

 

For the past eighteen years, my single mission in the middle school social studies classroom has been to make history not boring; I’ve been attempting the same in the middle-grade fiction space for a decade. My next frontier: Internet airwaves. 

 

See, I love a stage. Whether my classroom of twenty-five students or a gym of five hundred rabid upper elementary kids, I come alive when bringing the past to life. “Start a history YouTube channel, bruh” you might suggest, which I considered. But I hate the screen addiction of phones and especially school laptops that have eroded my students’ ability to do meaningful things with their time. Because that’s my goal, too: use the time I have amidst my wild life to create meaningful content for educators and parents in the arena I love most. 

 

So I’m going after it.

 

Wait – a podcast for kids? We definitely need some more details about that.

 

American Made is a history podcast for students in grades 3-7, positioned for teachers, parents, and homeschool parents to push-and-play. Purposefully on the shorter side (10-15 min), I explore the questions, stories, and struggles that built a nation using kid-friendly language, soundtracks, voice actors heralding primary sources, all while trying to muster the in-person humor and drama you’d get in my classroom. Original narrative appears as well, such as the Christmas special I wrote on Washington Crossing the Delaware. Supplemental resources, including editable handouts, sources, and ‘digging deeper’ ideas come with each episode, free, like the content itself. The short ad you hear in the middle of each episode is comedic — I made these products up. The “Overreactor Parental Zapper,” for example, is a dime-sized electrode that sticks to the back of an adult’s phone; when they overreact at their child’s soccer game, it sends a tiny shock through their body to remind them this is not the World Cup. 

 

What is your goal for the podcast?

 

I’m not after views or likes or even money (okay, maybe some money) but primarily use. Could a classroom teacher deploy this episode during their unit on the American Revolution? Could a Gifted/GIEP teacher use it as enrichment? Could a parent play it in the car on the way home from dance or soccer pick-up and spark a conversation? Could a home school co-op position it as a model to create their own podcast? These questions drive my topics and outlines, as do my daughter’s feedback when listening to a draft recording. “Dad, it’s a little boring at this part,” she’ll announce, headphones on, while working on a posterboard for a school presentation on City Spies. 

 

“You know, James Ponti and I are like, basically colleagues,” I remind her. No response. 

 

With teaching, traveling, running author visits, and podcasting, it must be difficult to find time to write. Do you have any new books on the horizon?

 

Every artist — writers especially — battle legions of demons collectively known as Other Cool Ideas. I still have books in me that I want to write, including our family’s America Tour story; I actively harbor dreams of being the next Nicholas Sparks; maybe one day I’ll finish that historical rap album, to my children’s great shame. But in the year 2026, fittingly America’s 250th anniversary of Independence, I’m embarking on my own “Cause” as the Founders called it, a mission I began in 2007 when I walked into the social studies classroom: to help kids understand the past in a not horribly boring way. It’s for my readers, teachers, and parents who have already or might yet discover my brand of storytelling. If you’re reading this, it’s also for you.

 

And I would love to have you join me on this audio adventure. 

 

Matt, thank you so much for taking the time to share your adventures – both real and fictional – with us. Before you run, please let us know where we can catch up with you!

 

Thanks for the interview! It’s great to share a little about myself and my books with your readers. For anyone interested in following me, here’s a list of all the places you can find me online:

 

Website: https://www.matthew-landis.com/

Instagram: @Matthew_Landis 

TikTok: @authorlandis 

X (formerly Twitter): @AuthorLandis

YouTube: @author.matthewlandis

Substack: @mattlandis

__________

 

Author Matthew LandisMatthew Landis is a full-time Social Studies teacher at Tamanend Middle School in Pennsylvania where he seeks to slay boredom wherever it lurks in his classroom. He is married to an elementary teacher (highly recommended) whose wisdom helps him balance in teaching, writing, and life. He won Mississippi’s 2020 Magnolia Book Award and the ILA 2019 Teacher’s Choices Reading List Award. A four-time Junior Library Guild recipient, Matthew’s middle grade novel, “It’s the End of the World as I Know It,” was shortlisted for the Virginia Reader’s Award, the Missouri Truman Reading Award, Oklahoma’s Sequoyah Book Award, and the South Dakota Teen Choice Award. His MG novel “Operation Final Notice” is currently shortlisted for Washington State’s Sasquatch Award. He has four kids, thirty-five chickens, three cats, and loves tacos. He hasn’t slept well since 2015.

 

 

 

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