Posts Tagged children’s books

STEM Tuesday – Shining the Light on Technology, Engineering, and Math — Book List

By on June 5, 2018   /   Engineering, Math, MUF Contributor Books, Nonfiction, STEM Tuesday, Technology  

This month’s theme focuses specifically on the TEM in STEM. The following list features  books that use technology, engineering, and math in real-world situations. We hope they inspire young readers–and you! the adults in their lives –to promo all STEM categories. If you have other title ideas for middle-grade readers, please share them in the comment section below.

The Next Wave: The Quest to Harness the Power of the Oceans  by Elizabeth Rusch  In this Scientists in the Field title, we meet the engineers working to transfer the power of the ocean into energy for us to use. Through imagination, innovation, and science they have developed devices to create “ocean electricity” that is renewable and an alternative to using fossil fuels.

Hidden Figures: Young Readers Edition by Margot Lee Sheerly  This edition of the bestselling book of the same title allows younger readers to become empowered by the powerful story of the African-American female NASA mathematicians who were instrumental in our early space program.

 

Everything Robots by Jennifer Swanson  We’ve already seen robotic vacuums, but can you imagine tiny robo-bees or a joke-telling robot? Readers will discover an entirely new world of technology in this National Geographic book. Packed with visuals, readers will explore what artificial intelligence is all about.

The Way Things Work Now by David Macauley
This revised and updated edition for Macauley’s The Way Things Work includes wi-fi, touchscreens, 3D printers, as well as levers, lasers, and windmills.  Budding engineers will love this one!

 

The Story of Buildings: From the Pyramids to the Sydney Opera House and Beyond by Patrick Dillon, illustrated by Stephen Biesty Aspiring architects will enjoy the look at the inner workings of many famous buildings in this book.

 

Women of Steel and Stone: 22 Inspirational Architects, Engineers, and Landscape Designers by Anna M. LewisThis book features 22 profiles of women who have designed, built, and landscaped our world. The inspirational stories are perfect for Women’s History Month and every month after.

 

 

Curious Jane: Science + Design + Engineering for Inquisitive Girls by Curious Jane   The pages of Curious Jane are filled with DIY projects from making face scrubs to building a cloud in a jar.

 

Coding programs have sprung up all over the country. These next two books can get girls (and boys) started on creating apps, games, and robots. Readers will have fun exploring the world of computer science .

Girls Who Code: Learn To Code and Change the World by Reshma Saujani, illus. by Andrea Tsurum

 

Girl Code: Gaming, Going Viral, and Getting it Done by Andrea Gonzalez and Sophie Houser

 

 

And a fabulous FICTION series to pair with the above two coding titles:

Monsters and Modules by Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes — the final installment in the Secret Coders series
This title will be released October 2, 2018, but until then students can solve logic puzzles and learn basic coding skills while Hopper, Eni, and Josh solve a mind-bending mystery.

 

STEM Tuesday book lists prepared by:

Nancy Castaldo has written books about our planet for over 20 years including her 2016 title, THE STORY OF SEEDS: From Mendel’s Garden to Your Plate, and How There’s More of Less To Eat Around The World, which earned the Green Earth Book Award and other honors. Nancy’s research has taken her all over the world from the Galapagos to Russia. She enjoys sharing her adventures, research, and writing tips. She strives to inform, inspire, and educate her readers. Nancy also serves as the Regional Advisor of the Eastern NY SCBWI region. Her 2018 title is BACK FROM THE BRINK: Saving Animals from Extinction. www.nancycastaldo.com

Patricia Newman writes middle-grade nonfiction that inspires kids to seek connections between science, literacy, and the environment. The recipient of  a Sibert Honor Award for Sea Otter Heroes and the Green Earth Book Award for Plastic, Ahoy!, her books have received starred reviews, been honored as Junior Library Guild Selections, and included on Bank Street College’s Best Books lists. During author visits, she demonstrates how her writing skills give a voice to our beleaguered environment. Visit her at www.patriciamnewman.com.

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Indie Spotlight: Bards Alley

By on May 30, 2018   /   children's bookstores, independent bookstores, Indie Spotlight  

Our Indie Spotlight shines today on Bards Alley, in Vienna, Virginia. The combination bookstore/café offers a homey, intimate space to browse for your favorite book and sample some local fare including coffee, hummus, bakery items, and even wine.

Owner Jen Morrow opened Bards just ten months ago and says the idea came as she watched her young son learn how to read. During that time, Jen rediscovered the nostalgia of going to a bookstore, and thus Bards Alley was born.

Here’s more from Jen:

MUF: What’s the biggest challenge in keeping an independent bookstore alive when the competition from big bookstores is so fierce?

Jen: It is simply finding ways to leverage being “small but mighty.” We don’t have access to the same resources, but what we are able to do locally is a differentiator. We employ people in the community, pay local taxes, donate to schools and non-profits, and bring customers to the town center who will hopefully shop at other local businesses. By offering in-store events, many of which provide access to authors, a curated selection of books tailored for our community, and programs for local aspiring writers, we are promoting culture and diversity. A place where people can unplug for awhile. I love it when a customer steps into the store, takes a deep breath, and says, “Ah, I love the smell of books!”

MUF: We love the smell of books too! What do you love most about Bards Alley?

Jen: I love seeing the joy on people’s faces when they walk in for the first time. I can’t tell you how many “thank-you’s” I have received over the past ten months. It is clear that our community was looking for a place to browse and talk about books, across many generations and genres of readers.

 

MUF: You clearly focus on making everything look welcoming—including folding the café experience right into that ambiance.

Jen: We take pride in how we curate local offerings as closely as we curate our book selections. Our outdoor patio is very popular this time of year! With our café, we are able to provide book clubs and customers who attend our author events a convenience that other bookstores can’t provide.

MUF: As middle-grade authors, we’re always interested in what readers want. What titles (fiction and non-fiction) do you find yourself most recommending to readers ages 8-12—and their parents? Which titles are the ones most frequently asked for?

Jen: This is such a good question! Series are wildly popular at our store, and I find myself recommending The Unwanteds, which my son (who is almost 11) read through in a few short weeks. I’ll also recommend anything by Stuart Gibbs and Louis Sachar. Debut novels are also a favorite of mine to recommend and recently I have talked a lot about The Wild Robot and The Wild Robot Escapes, as well as Orphan Island. Our young customers are also seeking graphic novels such as Smile and Drama and El Deafo. But we have also been recommending a lot of new and old classics, such as A Wrinkle in Time, Hatchet, Tuck Everlasting, and Anne of Green Gables. We are also seeing popularity with a lot of fiction based on real-life events, such as Refugee and The War that Saved My Life. Of course, most people have found Harry Potter on their own, but I can’t help but recommend it to those who haven’t yet given it a try!

One last note: this summer Bards will be offering a Summer Reading Challenge for school-aged children: read a book in each of these categories:

  1. Biography or Non-fiction
  2. Comic book or graphic novel
  3. A book written by an author of color
  4. Poetry

MUF: Thank you so much, Jen!

Bards Alley is located at 110 Church Street, in Vienna, VA.

(571) 459-2653

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STEM Tuesday Cool Inventions and the People Who Create Them – Interview with author Mary Kay Carson

By on May 22, 2018   /   Author Interviews, Inventors / Inventions, STEM, STEM Tuesday  

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

Today we’re interviewing author Mary Kay Carson who wrote this month’s featured cool invention book, Alexander Graham Bell for Kids: His Life and Inventions 

Find out how Alexander Graham Bell invented not only the telephone, but also early versions of the phonograph, the metal detector, airplanes, and hydrofoil boats. This Scottish immigrant was also a pioneering speech teacher and a champion of educating those with hearing impairments, work he felt was his most important contribution to society. Bell worked with famous Americans such as Helen Keller and aviators Glenn Curtiss and Samuel P. Langley, and his inventions competed directly with those of Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers.

May Kay’s books include  a number of titles in Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s award-winning SCIENTISTS IN THE FIELD series, including  Park Scientists and The Bat Scientists, an ALA’s 2011 Notable Children’s Books for Middle Readers. Her book Exploring the Solar System was the 2009 recipient of the American Institute ofAeronautics and Astronautics Children’s Literature Award and the State Library of Ohio selected Beyond the Solar System as a CHOOSE TO READ OHIO book for 2015 & 2016. Visit her at marykaycarson.com  or on Twitter at @MaryKayCarson

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JAS: Thanks for joining us today, Mary Kay. This is a fabulous book! I love how you found such a unique trait to describe this historical figure. I mean, everyone knows that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, but not many know why. Can you tell us how you discovered this fact? And also why you used it to create your whole book?

MKC: In today’s terms, we’d call Alexander Graham Bell a third-generation speech therapist. Bell’s father and grandfather worked with people trying to overcome speech impediments like stuttering or pronunciation struggles because of hearing impairments. Alexander Graham Bell was born into a family where the proper mouth position for making the sound of S was dinner table talk. Bell naturally went into this line of work, as well. Growing up with a mother who couldn’t hear gave him a deep understanding of both the isolation of the hearing impaired as well as a motivation for understanding how sound is made, transmitted, and perceived.

JAS: How did you come up with all of the activities? And why did you choose to add activities to your book?

MKC: I knew Alexander Graham Bell For Kids would include activities as a title in the Chicago Review Press “For Kids” series, all of which have 21 activities. It’s actually why I thought the book would be such a good fit for the series. Bell’s experiments, investigations, and inventions run the gamut from sound and light to flying machines and sheep genetics. The telephone invention alone lends itself to activities about electricity, sound, vibrations, and batteries. I’ve written four other books in this series with activities and Alexander Graham Bell For Kids was by far the easiest to come up with activities for. He was a wellspring of ideas.

JAS: The use of original sketches of Bell’s inventions are really great. How difficult was it to get permission to use them?

MKC: The Library of Congress has a huge Alexander Graham Bell archive, much of it digitized and in the public domain. It includes laboratory notebooks, invention blueprints, journals, personal letters, and photographs. It’s a real treasure trove of primary source material.

JAS: Why do you think learning about inventors is a so important for kids?

MKC: One of my favorite Bell quotes is: “The inventor is a man who looks around upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world.” To me, Bell’s description of an inventor actually describes young people in general. Most see the world as overdue for upgrades and improvements. Many have ideas on how to make things better, too. Being able to envision something different is the first step to inventing. Whether we’re talking about tackling a changing climate or designing a fun video game, it all starts with “What if…”

JAS: How would you suggest a teacher use your book in the classroom?

MKC: There are quite a few ways teachers can use the book in the classroom. The biography itself is instructive on how life experiences shaped the inventor that Bell became. The primary source material is cited and resources given for older kids who want to dig deeper into Bell’s life and legacy. Some of the activities in the book are simple enough for even kindergarteners to explore sound and light. Other activities are more open ended and challenge students to think of and execute an idea of their own.

Buy a Copy of the Alexander Graham Bell book

Praise for Alexander Graham Bell: “Many of the activities featured throughout the chapters, such as making an ear trumpet and feeling sound vibrations, use materials readers likely have at home, fairly easily giving them a taste of the devices used during Bell’s time and illustrating properties of sound. Avid readers can also pursue activities that require special purchases, such as seeing sound and making a pie-tin telegraph. Numerous black-and-white photographs of Bell and his family, period scenery, and artifacts immerse readers in the world of this prolific inventor, from his free-roaming childhood through his adulthood as a teacher of the deaf, an inventor many times over, and a family man. Children who enjoy exploring different symbolic communication codes, historical sciences, and inventions will find much to dig into in this detailed volume.

Thorough and well-rounded. (timeline, resources, glossary, notes, bibliography)”–Kirkus

 

Win a FREE copy of the Alexander Graham Bell book!   Enter the giveaway by leaving a comment below. The randomly-chosen winner will be contacted via email and asked to provide a mailing address (within the U.S. only) to receive the book.

Good Luck! 

Hosting this week is Jennifer Swanson, fellow science nerd, and author of Astronaut Aquanaut: How Space Science and Sea Science Interact and other nonfiction books for kids. @JenSwanBooks

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