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STEM Tuesday
  • Calculating chimpanzees
    STEM Tuesday — Animal Perceptions– Interview with Author Stephanie Gibeault
    March 26, 2024 by
      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 Stephanie Gibeault, author of Making Sense of Dog Senses: How Our Furry Friends Experience the World.  It’s a fascinating look at how dogs use their senses, often better than the people around them. The School and Library Journal said, “A fun, quirky book about dogs and their many abilities; great for animal lovers, young and old.”   Christine Taylor-Butler: Welcome to STEM Tuesday, Stephanie. I’m always excited to talk to a woman with a STEM background. Were you a science person as a child? Stephanie Gibeault: Yes, I was particularly interested in biology. I had all kinds of pets and loved observing animals in the wild. Catching them too. I would trap snakes and keep them in my tent or show my amphibian-fearing mother every frog and toad I could collect. I also loved fishing with my uncle....
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  • Choose Your Own Adventure stack of books
    STEM Tuesday — Animal Perceptions– Writing Tips & Resources
    March 19, 2024 by
      Choose Your Own Writing Adventure Did you ever read a Choose Your Own Adventure® book? As a kid I devoured those. You would read a few paragraphs and then when there’s a plot point—when a normal book would have the main character make the decision (and learn the consequences)—in these books, you, the reader get to choose. It might look like this: If you charge down the tunnel, straight into the dragon’s lair, turn to page 23. If you sneak around the mountain, hoping to slip in through a backdoor, turn to page 42. What if we could see writing like that? What if we could help students see writing like that? What if we could apply this to the challenge of writing to convey information? One of my greatest struggles is structure. Finding just the right approach to convey information. I know I’m not the only writer (young or old)...
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  • STEM Tuesday -- Animal Perceptions-- In the Classroom
    STEM Tuesday — Animal Perceptions– In the Classroom
    March 12, 2024 by
    This month’s books delve into the mysterious senses and minds of different creatures. How do they communicate and use tools? What kinds of sounds do they make and what do they mean? Can we ever know what they think? Endlessly fascinating, these ideas are sure to spark wonder and inspire more questions in the classroom. Here are a few ways to explore animal perceptions with your students. Beastly Brains: How Animals Think, Talk, and Feel by Nancy Castaldo Castaldo delves into the minds of animals like dolphins, dogs, and elephants to explore animal empathy, communication, tool use, and lifestyle through interviews and historical anecdotes. The book also mentions research from some great minds, such as Charles Darwin and Jane Goodall, regarding the behavior of animals and revolutionizes old theories through the lens of modern science.   Worm Jar Activity: In this book, Castaldo describes Darwin’s study of worms to determine...
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  • STEM Tuesday -- Animal Perceptions-- Book List
    STEM Tuesday — Animal Perceptions– Book List
    March 5, 2024 by
    Animals see the world differently from humans. Check out this list of middle grade books that explore various ways in which animals perceive, sense, and communicate. Detector Dogs, Dynamite Dolphins, and Other Animals with Super Sensory Powers  by Cara Giaimo, Christina Couch, and Daniel Duncan   This book features an array of different animals that use their “super” senses,from echolocation to electroreception to help humans tackle real-world problems like pollution and global warming. Examples include Cynthia, a pipe-fixing ferret, and Rosita, a goat who helps prevent wildfires. Each chapter features a different animal and also provides guided experiments for young, curious minds.     How to Talk to a Tiger…and Other Animals: How Critters Communicate in the Wild by Jason Bittel and Kelsey Buzzell   What do skunks, blue-ringed octopuses, and ladybugs have in common? They all use aposematic coloration, or warning colors, to communicate with other animals! Every page...
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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.…

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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.…

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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.…

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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!…