Search by Topic

STEM Tuesday
  • STEM Tuesday Team Shoutout!!
    STEM Tuesday Team Shoutout!!
    May 30, 2023 by
      As we come up on our sixth anniversary of STEM Tuesday (yes – SIX years!) I thought it would be a great time to remind you of the AMAZING authors who make STEM Tuesday possible. The STEM Tuesday blog posts are written by a group of award-winning children’s authors, teachers, and writers who are passionate about presenting STEM/STEAM topics in a way that kids of all ages will find exciting, inspiring, and engaging. You can find more information about each of them by visiting their websites, purchasing some of their books, and also inviting them to your schools and conferences.   And now….. Meet the STEM Tuesday TEAM! Week 1: Book List  Sue Heavenrich Sue Heavenrich is an independent environmental journalist and children’s writer. She has written for a variety of magazines including Ranger Rick, Highlights, Cobblestone, and Organic Gardening as well as local and regional newspapers. When not writing, she’s either in the garden or tromping through the...
    Read more
  • How to Survive in the Age of Dinosaurs Blog Tour and Giveaway
    How to Survive in the Age of Dinosaurs Blog Tour and Giveaway
    May 24, 2023 by
        Welcome to the blog tour for How to Survive in the Age of Dinosaurs, part of National Geographic Kids’ DinoMAYnia – a month-long celebration of all things prehistoric! All week blogs are hosting fun excerpts from this handy guide so you will know just what it takes to dodge deadly dinosaurs, ride out mega monsoons and escape other perils of the prehistoric! How To Survive the Jurassic Feeling proud for making it this far? Well, that was just the warm-up. In the Jurassic, Earth’s land begins to split apart. Enormous cracks appear in the ground. The planet strains and shakes. Finally, Pangaea splinters. The climate changes, too: What was once hot and dry becomes warm and wet. Lush plants sprout up, a feast for some of the biggest dinosaurs that ever lived. And predators evolve, too — large and ferocious enough to take the others down. This is...
    Read more
  • Super Gear Book
    STEM Tuesday– Material Science– Interview with Author Jennifer Swanson
    May 23, 2023 by
      Welcome to STEM Tuesday: Author Interview, a repeating feature for the last Tuesday of every month. Go Science-Tech-Engineering-Math! Today, I’m delighted to interview the founder of STEM Tuesday, Jennifer Swanson! Jennifer is a huge fan of STEM and loves to write about technical topics. She did just that in her SUPER GEAR: Nanotechnology and Sports Team Up! book with Charlesbridge Publishing.     A book about nanotechnology and sports… how did you put those two topics together?    Well I’ve always loved technonogy and I love sports, too. In fact, I’ve played tons of sports my whole life. Those I haven’t played, I’ve watched. I’m a huge fan of the Olympics, too. We used to watch it as a family. Do you remember when Michael Phelps wore that full-body swimsuit in the 2008 Beijing Olympics? I do! It was fabulous and he won tons of medals with it. So did his...
    Read more
  • Neri Oxman photo
    STEM Tuesday– Material Science– Writing Tips and Resources
    May 16, 2023 by
    Materials Science is a new category for me. My research turned up intriguing connections with arts activities because much of it is about discoveries. So, this blog post is about some Very New research on materials and a Very Old technique for science exploration that is wonderfully flexible, easy and inexpensive, and makes use of recycled and sustainable materials. I was particularly pleased to find the Very New in the work of Neri Oxman. She blurs the line between science and design. Wikipedia describes her work as “embodying environmental design and digital morphogenesis*, with shapes and properties that are determined by their context.” Yes*, I had to look it up too. It means, according to Merriam-Webster – a branch of biology that deals with the form and structure of animals and plants. There have been a number of good books on Materials Science in the previous May STEM Tuesday blogs....
    Read more

Contributors

Photo of Christine Taylor Butler

Christine Taylor Butler

Christine Taylor-Butler has been a prolific consumer of public
libraries from an early age. A consummate tinkerer it was deemed
advisable she study engineering at MIT for job security. Years later she made a break for the corporate door and delved into children’s literature hoping to write stories about talking animals when a sneaky editor at Scholastic conned her into writing non-fiction for children.…

Photo of Callie Dean

Callie Dean

Callie Dean is a musician, writer, educator, and program evaluator. She teaches applied research at Eastern University and is passionate about the role of the arts in effecting community transformation. She lives in Shreveport, La., with her husband and two sons.  She is the director of CYBER.ORG, a STEM education organization with a national network of more than 25,000 K-12 teachers.…

Photo of Andi Diehn

Andi Diehn

Andi Diehn grew up near the ocean chatting with horseshoe crabs and now lives in the mountains surrounded by dogs, cats, lizards, chickens, ducks, moose, deer, and bobcats, some of which help themselves to whatever she manages to grow in the garden. You are most likely to find her reading a book, talking about books, writing a book, or discussing politics with her sons.…

Photo of Jenna Grodinski

Jenna Grodinski

Jenna Grodzicki is the author of more than twenty fiction and nonfiction children’s books. Her books include Wild Style: Amazing Animal Adornments (Millbrook Press 2020) and I See Sea Food: Sea Creatures That Look Like Food (Millbrook Press 2019), the winner of the 2020 Connecticut Book Award in the Young Readers Nonfiction Category.…

Photo of Mike Hays

Mike Hays

Mike Hays is from Kansas and is a tried and true flatlander by birth. He would most assuredly be obsessed with a statue of mysterious origins, especially if he could buy said statue on the cheap. He has worked as a molecular microbiologist for over 25 years, has coached high school sports, and writes middle-grade books.…

Photo of Sue Heavenrich

Sue Heavenrich

Sue Heavenrich writes about science for children and their families, from space to backyard ecology. Bees, flies, squirrel behavior—things she observes in her backyard and around her neighborhood—inspire her writing. A long line of ants marching across the kitchen counter generated one of her first articles for kids. If you can’t find her at the keyboard, check the garden.Her most recent book is  Diet for a Changing Climate (2018).

Photo of Karen Latchana Kenney

Karen Latchana Kenney

Karen Latchana Kenney loves to write books about animals, and looks for them wherever she goes—from leafcutter ants trailing through the Amazon rain forest in Guyana, where she was born, to puffins in cliff-side burrows on the Irish island of Skellig Michael. She especially enjoys creating books about nature, biodiversity, conservation, and groundbreaking scientific discoveries—but also writes about civil rights, astronomy, historical moments, and many other topics.…

Photo of Kirsten W. Larson

Kirsten W. Larson

Kirsten W. Larson used to work with rocket scientists at NASA. Now she writes about both science and history for kids. She is the author of 25 nonfiction books, including the Robotics in Our World series (Amicus). Calkins Creek will publish her debut picture book, WOOD, WIRE, WINGS: Emma Lilian Todd Invents an Airplane (illus.…

Photo of Margo Lemieux

Margo Lemieux

A recently retired professor of art, Margo is devoted to seeing that the A stays in STEAM. Science & technology need the heart that comes with art. It was lack of heart that led to the ecological crisis we have today. The process of creativity is closely related to that of scientific inquiry.

She is a  published picture book writer and illustrator, editor, poet, and amateur ukulele player.…

Photo of Lydia Lukidis

Lydia Lukidis

Lydia Lukidis is the author of 48 trade and educational books, as well as 31 e-Books. Her latest STEM book, THE BROKEN BEES’ NEST (Kane Press, 2019), was nominated for a CYBILS Award, and her forthcoming STEM book, DEEP, DEEP, DOWN: The Secret Underwater Poetry of the Mariana Trench will be published by Capstone in 2023.…

Photo of Maria Marshall

Maria Marshall

Maria is a children’s author, blogger, and poet passionate about making nature and reading fun for children. She was a round 2 judge for the 2018 & 2017 Cybils Awards. And a judge for the #50PreciousWords competition since its inception. Two of her poems are published in The Best Of Today’s Little Ditty 2016 and 2014-2015 anthologies.…

Photo of Heather L Montgomery

Heather L Montgomery

Heather L. Montgomery writes for kids who are wild about animals. The weirder, the wackier, the better. An award-winning educator, Heather uses yuck appeal to engage young minds. She has a B.S. in biology and an M.S. in environmental education and has written a dozen nonfiction books including How Rude! Real Bugs Who Won’t Mind Their Manners (Scholastic) and her upcoming Something Rotten: A Fresh Look at Roadkill(Bloomsbury).

Photo of Carla Mooney

Carla Mooney

Carla Mooney loves to explore the world around us and discover the details about how it works. An award-winning author of numerous nonfiction science books for kids and teens, she hopes to spark a healthy curiosity and love of science in today’s young people. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, three kids, and dog. When not writing, she can often be spotted at a hockey rink for one of her kids’ games.…

Photo of Shruthi Rao

Shruthi Rao

Shruthi was that kid who actually enjoyed writing essays in school! She wrote her first novel when she was eleven. It was an Enid Blyton rip-off. It was terrible (so she says). She didn’t write stories for a long time after that. Instead, Shruthi got a Master’s degree in Energy Engineering from one of the top schools of India, and worked in the IT industry for four years.…

Photo of Janet Slingerland

Janet Slingerland

Janet Slingerland grew up studying animals and conducting science experiments before pursuing a degree in electrical engineering. She spent 15 years writing code for things like submarines, phones, and airplanes before deciding to share her passion for knowledge and STEM with others. Janet now has more than 20 published books for readers in grades K through 12, including Explore Atoms and Molecules!…

Photo of Susan Summers

Susan Summers

Susan started her career as a zookeeper and enjoyed working with polar bears, wolves, and owls – to name just a few of her favorite animals. Interest in science and nature firmly took hold and she followed that career by becoming a wildlife biologist. In this engaging field, she was able to participate in research on a variety of wildlife, including bears, bats, and fabulous birds!…

Photo of Jennifer Swanson

Jennifer Swanson

Jennifer Swanson dreams of one day running away to the Museum of Science and Industry- then maybe she could look at all the exhibits and try out all the gadgets without competing for them with her kids. An author of thirty nonfiction science books for grades 3-6, Jennifer’s goal is to show kids that Science Rocks!…