STEM Tuesday

Welcome to STEM Tuesday: Author Interview, a repeating feature for the last Tuesday of every month. Go Science-Tech-Engineering-Math!

Today we’re interviewing Sarah Aronson, author of the award winning book: Just Like Rube Goldberg.  The book is a fascinating look at the journey of a trained engineer who decides to take a job at a newspaper instead. His drawings of ridiculous inventions doing simple tasks became so popular, people use them as a starting point for creating their own “Goldberg” inventions.

“Aronson notes that Goldberg ‘drew comics to make us look closer’; fittingly, this thoughtful, playful picture-book biography does just that, with whimsical pencil, ink, and digital illustrations capturing the machines’ intricacies.” – The Horn Book

Christine Taylor-Butler: Sarah, you are a prolific writer for both children’s fiction and nonfiction. But you didn’t start out as a writer?

Sarah Aronson: I didn’t. I taught fitness then trained to become a physical therapist.  When you are working with someone that has had a traumatic brain injury there is no book that explains how that individual person moves. You have to figure out the solution to helping that specific person being more functional. Now I think of writing and revision as rehab. When you take that sense of imagination and foresight and put it into whatever you are doing, you are doing STEM.

CTB: How did you get the idea for this book?

Sarah: When I was 7 years old, I was watching the movie, Chitty, Chitty Bang Bang. The breakfast machine is a Rube Goldberg contraption. I couldn’t believe how cool that was. I was a child with a lot of energy so I tried to make a breakfast machine with my mom’s best dishes. Here’s a tip – use plastic.

CTB: What happened to the dishes?

Sarah: I broke them all. Luckily mom wasn’t so found of that pattern. After seeing that, my dad began sharing Rube Goldberg cartoons with me. Later, while working for Jack La Lanne Health Clubs, I thought about those chain reactions when I was making my aerobics routines. How do we make a chain reaction with our bodies? How do we make ourselves stronger? I went back to college and got my Masters in Physical Therapy. I became a therapist and thought about physics while working. Once I became a writer I thought, who would I write about if I were going to write a biography? Ding! Why not Rube Goldberg?

CTB: He didn’t want to do an ordinary job.

Sarah: He loved drawing. But is father didn’t want him to be a starving artist. And I remembered thinking, I’m a lot like Rube. My Dad is an economist and when I switched to writing he said, “you’re supposed to take a job that makes more money.” He was speaking out of fear. But he ultimately understood what I was trying to do and that I had something to say. I didn’t study engineering but Rube did. When he looked around he was latching on to creativity. He was worried that giving people all these machines was going to give people less opportunities for ingenuity. For thinking out of the box. He lived in the industrial age and he worried what was happening to curiosity.

We see this with our laptops and AI. Rube would go bananas. He would say “why are you giving away your brain to a machine that will never be as creative as you are.

CTB: I once read that DaVinci suggested that everyone should create art because it was a way of developing the manual dexterity needed to do their jobs. We don’t get that when we allow machines to do it for us.

Sarah: Yes – when you look at Rube Goldberg’s cartoons, you see humor. You see his desire to have fun with this idea of making machines that make simple things complicated. He’s trying to say “Use your brain!”

He wanted to be an artist. But like many parents his father wanted him to have a steady job. So he went to college and studied engineering. But he didn’t want to do that kind of job. So he took a job at a newspaper and worked his way up creating cartoons of complicated machines.

CTB: So that’s his superpower and his appeal. These unusual drawings of inventions that do more than needed to do a simple job.

Sarah: The power of Rube Goldberg inventions is that it’s not like the machines in engineering school. These complicated contraptions weren’t practical in the real world. They weren’t there to solve real world problems. They were to tickle the imagination. Rube drew comics to make us look closer. More important than any pile of nuts and bolts, it challenged people to use their brains. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and he’s included in the dictionary.

CTB: So his goal is to give people more freedom.

Sarah: Yes. This is what we need in education – a freedom to explore, discover, be curious and creative. And to try things where we don’t know what is going to happen in the end.

When we let go of the product and engage truly in the process, that’s why Rube’s concept of making something silly endures. It taps into what we are missing in education – to give kids a voice.

CTB: We want people to see, “Look at the joy, this person got from this process!” And also the author’s joy in writing this.

Sarah: I talk about that a lot. When we address writing with joy and openness and not being wedded to the ending. We then discover something. And we can apply it. All of the scientific models apply to everything in life. You’re thinking and connecting dots. That’s STEM. You’re dreaming about something that doesn’t feel obtainable. That’s STEM. I ask teachers to give their students 5 minutes a day to write in a curiosity journal. And I ask teachers not to look at it. To let students explore on their own. For example, if they are studying Abe Lincoln, they can ask questions, or just wonder what is inside that big hat.

CTB: That’s it. Just 5 minutes each day without rules.

Sarah: Yes. Give students a way to find their path to learning. That’s something 5 minutes a day can do. That’s how I start my own day. Writing in my curiosity journal. Lately, I’ve been drawing the view from my window. They’re not good. But they’re not for anyone but me and it gets my brain swirling. That sets me up for the day. That’s STEM. So that is what I try to help my writers get to. Don’t be so serious. Enjoy every step.

Celebrate when something works.

Celebrate when it doesn’t work.

CTB: One quick shout-out to your award winning illustrator, Robert Neubecker.

Sarah: Yes. His artwork is amazing. I tell authors not to get involved in the illustrations. You often get things back you can’t have imagined. Robert’s work is beautiful.

CTB: So what are you working on now? Anything we should be looking forward to?

Sarah: Right now I’m working on a picture book about Christopher Reeves. He was a superhero so I’m writing it about his super powers. But in the middle I am talking about spine injury and why he couldn’t recover and walk again. Thinking about the body I’m wearing my old physical therapy hat again.

There’s a movie coming out. It’s been 20 years since he died. He died young so he’s frozen in time. He would be in his 70’s now.

CTB: Christopher Reeve’s public outlook was so positive.

Sarah: I think how I go about writing a biography . It is because I loved how a person is. Reeves is so embedded in the miraculous. He’s almost unreal. When I wrote the book Head Case it was because my patients who had head injuries couldn’t get complete coverage. Christopher Reeves was able to get everything he needed. He was inspiring.

CTB: And you have a finished picture book coming out.

Sarah: I also have a book about Bella Abzug. It is gorgeous. It will be out in a few weeks. She was one of my childhood heroes. I was fascinated by this woman who was loud, and Jewish, and said what she wanted. That just blew my heart open. My first title was originally, “Bela knows everything.” She was an activist and lawyer before she ran for Congress at the age of 50. She was the first to run on a woman’s platform and she was a co-conspirator with Shirley Chisholm. They didn’t agree on everything but they worked together and that really inspired me. She was raised by parents who thought charity was good, but teaching people to help themselves is better.

“A woman’s place is in the house – the House of Representatives.” – Bela Abzug

Advice from Sarah:

The most important thing I want people to get is that STEM is learning, STEM is fun, STEM is discovery and it’s integral to everything we do. I was a kid who didn’t think I could ever do STEM. I thought it was about being a doctor, or being really smart. Even when I took physics for Physical Therapy. I didn’t get it until I dissected a human. Messing up with your hands is how we learn. Crumbling a piece of paper and throwing it in the garbage is how I grow. It means I had and idea, but now I have a better one.

“Strive for something that seems impossible. Like a yoga pose. When you are striving and reaching and losing your balance, you’re gaining strength.”

Sarah Aronson is the award-winning author of books for young people. She has earned an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work includes novels and picture books, fiction and nonfiction. She also teaches writing for Highlights Foundation.

She loves working with young writers in schools, and grown-up writers at the Highlights Foundation, and Writers on the Net (www.writers.com). Sarah has served as an SCBWI mentor in both Illinois and Michigan, and is now the PAL coordinator for Illinois. She loves sports, overuses exclamation points and when she’s excited, she talks with her hands.

Your host is Christine Taylor-Butler, a graduate of MIT and author of The Oasis, Save the… Tigers, Save the . . . Blue Whales, and many other nonfiction books for kids. She is also the author of the STEM based middle grade sci-fi series The Lost Tribes. Follow @ChristineTB on Twitter/X and or @ChristineTaylorButler on Instagram. She lives in Missouri with a tank of fish and cats that think they are dogs.