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STEM Tuesday– Periodic Table — Book List

By on March 4, 2025   /   Periodic Table, STEM Tuesday  

The periodic table is an ordered arrangement of the chemical elements and it explains so much about the world around us. It’s never too early to introduce this concept to children, and these engaging books below do a great job of summarizing the information in kid-friendly ways as well as showing their relevance in everyday life.

 

 

A Kids’ Guide to the Periodic Table: Everything You Need to Know about the Elements written by Edward P. Zovinka and Rose A. Clark
This book provides a comprehensive dive into the Periodic Table, from aluminum to zinc. It features the history and science behind each element, and gives an overview for each one. The great thing is that it also shows children how these elements are relevant and make their way into pretty much everything around us.

 

 

 

Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Elements written and illustrated by Lisa Congdon
This visual encyclopedia includes an entry for each element, detailing its history, special traits, and uses in the world. With gorgeous illustrations and accessible text, Congdon showcases both her background as a science educator and her signature style as an artist.

 

 

 

 

Science Comics: The Periodic Table of Elements: Understanding the Building Blocks of Everything written and illustrated by Jon Chad
Graphic novels are a fantastic way to engage children and teach them scientific concepts. SCIENCE COMICS does a great job by creating a fictional narrative that pertains to STEM concepts. A book of fun chemistry experiments has fallen into the wrong hands and the protagonist must use her knowledge of the Periodic Table to save the day.

 

 

 

The Element in the Room: Investigating the Atomic Ingredients that Make Up Your Home written by Mike Barfield & illustrated by Lauren Humphrey
Join super-sleuth Sherlock Ohms on a series of scientific investigations about the atomic foundations of the world. Amid introductions to each of the elements, readers will unlock answers to the case of the smelly feather, the case of the burning Brazil nut, and more. Interspersed throughout the book are a series of comics that introduce famous chemists from history.

 

 

 

Quiz Yourself Clever! Elements by DK
What better way to learn a STEM concept than by quick and fun quizzes? This book includes interesting facts and relevant applications for all the elements in the periodic table, not to mention eye catching images. It also includes hundreds of quick-fire questions for children to test their knowledge.

 

 

 

Animated Science: Periodic Table written by John Farndon & illustrated by Shiho Pate
This comic book aims to demystify the Periodic Table in a way that makes science fun. It rebrands the eight groups of elements with memorable names, like the Fizzies and the Gassies, and personifies each of the elements with eye-catching illustrations. Along the way, readers will learn how the Periodic Table came to be, how it is organized, and how elements combine to form every substance in the universe!

 

 

 

 

Everything You Need to Ace Chemistry in One Big Fat Notebook (Big Fat Notebooks) written by Jennifer Swanson
This series developed by Workman Publishing provides comprehensive guides for high school students. This one in particular focuses on chemistry, starting with atoms, elements, compounds, and of course, the periodic table. It also features other chemistry concepts from quantum theory to the pH scale to chemical reactions.

 

 

cover of Sam Keen's book "The Disappearing Spoon" featuring chemistry beakers on a black background

 

The Disappearing Spoon written by Sam Kean
This book retells the surprising and fascinating history of the Periodic Table and the many scientists whose “elemental” discoveries changed the world of science. Kean connects chemistry concepts to world history (for example, by tracing the development of chemical warfare all the way from ancient Greece to World War I) and captures the personalities, politics, and rivalries of pioneering scientists, from Dmitri Mendeleev and Robert Bunsen to Marie Curie and Linus Pauling.

 

 

 

 

Women in Chemistry written by Mary Wissinger and illustrated by Danielle Pioli
This book was designed to motivate young girls to learn more about the world of STEM. It provides accessible information about scientific concepts but is structured in an engaging way. The narrative follows a curious young girl who asks questions which are then answered by a narrator. The book also features mini biographies of notable female scientists from Rosalind Franklin to Ada Yonath.

 

 

Kate the Chemist: The Big Book of Experiments written by Kate Biberdorf
Dr. Kate Biberdorf, aka “Kate the Chemist,” is on a mission to make science fun. Her engaging, hands-on approach shines through each of the 25 experiments featured in this book. Perfect for kids to try at home or for teachers to demonstrate in class, this book includes step-by-step instructions for making slime, writing secret messages, and more – complete with accessible explanations about the chemistry behind each project. Don’t miss the sequel, The Awesome Big Book of Edible Experiments for Kids.

 

 

 

 

Our World in Pictures The Periodic Table Flash Cards Cards written by DK
Instead of a book, children can read and look through a beautiful deck of flash cards about the periodic table. Each card describes a different element, from its basic information to more in depth details. The deck also includes a glossary and visual aids. It turns learning about the elements into a fun game!

 

This month’s STEM Tuesday book list was prepared by:

Author Lydia Lukidis

Lydia Lukidis is an award-winning author of 50+ trade and educational books for children. Her titles include DANCING THROUGH SPACE: Dr. Mae Jemison Soars to New Heights (Albert Whitman, 2024), DEEP, DEEP, DOWN: The Secret Underwater Poetry of the Mariana Trench (Capstone, 2023), which is a Crystal Kite winner, Forest of Reading Silver Birch Express Honor, and Cybils Award nominee. A science enthusiast from a young age, she now incorporates her studies in science and her everlasting curiosity into her books. Another passion of hers is fostering a love for children’s literacy through the writing workshops she regularly offers in elementary schools across Quebec with the Culture in the Schools program. For more information, please visit www.lydialukidis.com.

 

 

author Callie Dean

 

Callie Dean is a researcher, writer, and musician living in Shreveport, LA. Her first picture book, Marvelous Mistakes: Accidents That Made History, will be published in 2026. For more information, please visit https://calliebdean.com.

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STEM Tuesday– Fossils– Writing Tips & Resources

By on January 21, 2025   /   Fossils, STEM Tuesday  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome again to STEM Tuesday! I’m Stephanie.

When you’ve been writing for a long time, coming across an old piece of writing is like finding a fossil—it’s a record of a bygone era: incomplete, stripped of context, languishing unstudied. The metaphor breaks down eventually, because I’m no paleontologist, but you get the idea. We all have tidbits of stories that we’ve never completely unearthed, or found all the pieces of. And in that spirit, instead of generative prompts, today we have revision prompts!

Revision Prompt 1 | Dig, Discover, Excavate

Pickaxes and rock hammers ready? It’s time to revisit a piece of writing, something you haven’t looked at for a long time. Where do you keep these things? I have discarded notebooks, a drawer of ideas jotted on paper scraps, a list of odd facts, and files scattered on two computers. Wherever your archeological dig site, take a good look, skimming and rereading…

(Teachers, have students select excerpts from classroom journals or past assignments. Define a scope for your students… do you want them to revise a single sentence, a paragraph, a story idea?)

  1. Look for something that catches your eye, for whatever reason. Select a dusty piece but one that seems to say, “I have more to give.” Maybe you thought nothing of it when you wrote it, but now you’re not sure where it came from. It could be strange, or funny, dark-humored or sentimental. Mysterious. Playful. Whatever you like, but something you want to spend time on: something with a hook.
  2. For at least 10 minutes, do some exploratory writing, examining what you’ve found. What’s the size of your “fossil”

    Whale skeleton on sandy land in a desert. Picture by Rachel Claire. Used with permission.

    (writing sample)? What’s its nature? What do you like about it? What does the language do: nail an authorial tone that you like? perfectly capture a universal truth? Where did it come from, within you? answering these and the following questions. Does your fossil want to tell a fiction story, or a non-fiction one? What motivates you to excavate around it? What do you hope to find?

  3. Write down as many revision options for yourself as possible—and make them differ widely in scope, tone, and even genre. Think mash-ups. Think metaphors. Don’t edit your options. Go for variety.
  4. Next, discuss your revision ideas with someone else. If nobody is available, say them aloud anyway. Talk through them. Pick any two significantly different ideas and write them out for 10 minutes each.

If you feel exhausted, it’s well deserved. You dug. You discovered. You excavated. Congrats on your findings! Maybe you’ll continue to revise this piece, or maybe a year from now you’ll dig, discover, and excavate again. After all, the writing process sometimes feels paced like the geologic eras.

Revision Prompt 2 | Fragmented Storytelling

Fossils are seldom found complete. It’s more common to find fragments, and I find memory to be the same way. With creative nonfiction such as I’ve been writing lately for my undergrad classes, while the setting, characters, and events must be accurate, the license to embellish covers a good swath of gray area, such as story structure. Where memory fails, creative nonfiction offers artful transitions. Where historical gaps exist, the genre says, (since know it’s creative) give us approximations of the truth, renditions of it. Give us stories based on true stories.

Sometimes constructing context requires this sort of fragmented, non-linear, woven storytelling. It requires a rhetorical look at sequencing. If that’s something you like, maybe take a look at Marbles on the Floor: How to Assemble a Book of Poems by editors Sarah Giragosian and Virginia Konchan. It’s a compilation of essays about how to organize poems, but not-so-secretly, I think the methods for motif layering are similarly applicable to prose.

  1. Print both of your revisions from above, double spaced. You may want to print more than one copy each, since this exercise is about experimentation, and there’s always more than one way to revise a sentence. Cut your “fossil” into white strips of paper—individual words, phrases, entire sentences or paragraphs. Now piece these together like the bones of a skeleton. Create a new story using fragments. The story should become both and neither of the stories it was before.
  2. There’s no “wrong” way to do this exercise, but the important part is to break sentences in search of better sentences, to braid metaphors from each version, to look for surprises buried in the words that are already yours. Perhaps you wrote an entire paragraph that’s perfect as it is… almost. Can you substitute a better word from your other story? Alternate sentences. Try reversing parts of the story, or parts of the sentences. Where might sentence fragments do a better job of communicating than a whole sentence would?

How much fragmentation is too much fragmentation? That’s up to you and the story you’re telling. This is, after all, just an exercise. If your new piece feels too fragmented, adjust as necessary.

Do you still like the paleontology metaphor for writing? I’ll be posting some of my extra fossil-themed writing prompts on my website very soon!

All my best,

Stephanie

 

A nature-loving creative, Stephanie Jackson writes poems, articles, picture books, middle-grade novels, and more. Her nonfiction has been published in Cricket magazine and her poems have been published in The Dirigible Balloon and various literary journals including Touchstones, where she’s been a contributing poetry editor. Professional affiliations include the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and The Authors Guild. This spring she’s graduating from Utah Valley University with her English degree, emphasis in creative writing. She interacts with the kidlit community on Twitter as @canoesandcosmos, and you can read more at StephanieWritesforKids.com.

 

 

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STEM Tuesday — Bioluminesence– Writing Tips & Resources

By on October 15, 2024   /   Bioluminescence, STEM Tuesday  

 

What do bobtail squids, comb jellies, and lanternsharks have in common? Along with many other living things, these marine creatures glow in the dark. But why? In terms of economies, what does bioluminescence do for an animal? For some, it helps them attract mates—or meals. For vampire squids, it’s actually a defense mechanism; instead of squirting ink like other cephalopods, they squirt glowing mucus to distract predators. In terms of how creatures glow in the dark, there are multiple answers. But we’ll get to that in a minute. For now, why is an important question, one that leads to our first exercise.

Writing Prompt 1 | Facts as Fantasy Seeds

I’ve personally found that some of my best fiction writing germinates from simple facts. For example:

“Soldiers in the trenches sometimes used glowworms to read maps without drawing dangerous attention to themselves” (35)

GLOW: The WILD WONDERS OF BIOLUMINESCENCE BY JENNIFER N. R. SMITH

What ingenuity! This cool fact is a perfect seed for a fictional premise.

Come up with a glowing fantasy creature. Why does it glow? Choose one of the reasons listed above, or invent your own. How has this creature influenced the world in which it lives? What inventions has this living-glow technology inspired? How might your glowing creature factor into the plot of your book? What problems might bioluminescent life forces be able to solve – in what low-light situations might they ethically (or unethically, if you’re writing a dystopian novel) be put to use? Brainstorm for at least 15 minutes, taking down every writerly thought you have. For extra credit, sketch your creature.

Adapt the Exercise for Classroom Use
What are your students’ favorite animals and why? Use the bioluminescence prompt above with students as-is, or let them choose their own found fact to work with.

Writing Prompt 2 | What’s the Difference?

Again from Smith’s book GLOW, when reading about bioluminescence, I noticed two related words: biofluorescence and biophosphorescence. They all have to do with glowing in the dark, but the differences are scientifically significant. Let’s take a look:

  1. Fireflies and glow sticks are both examples of luminescence; they work due to chemical reactions. The other two don’t create light through chemical reactions, but capture light from other sources.)
  2. Fluorescent materials absorb non-visible light and convert it into visible light, emitting no afterglow. Sapphires, amber, pearls, and other gemstones are prime examples of fluorescent materials because they glow under UV light, but stop glowing immediately when the light is turned off. Biofluorescent organisms include polka-dot tree frogs, hawksbill sea turtles, and scorpions.
  3. Phosphorescent materials store the light they absorb, emitting it more slowly. Because their glow lasts for a while after their initial exposure to a light source, glow-in-the-dark stars are an example of phosphorescence. The study of biophosphorescence—phosphorescence in living organisms—is relatively new, with reports of such in rice, starch, and millipedes.

All this to say, paying attention to words’ definitions can make a huge difference. Before beginning, select three to five sentences from a work-in-progress. They could be from an article, a novel, an essay. Whatever you (or your students, if you’re using this as a classroom activity) are working on.

This second writing exercise is inspired by Several Short Sentences about Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg. He wrote that to be a writer,

“You need an ever-growing vocabulary—

and with it the awareness

that most words carry several meanings.

You need to look up even familiar words

every time you have a doubt

and especially

when you don’t have a doubt.

That is, very often.

That is, every time you write” (58).

With this in mind, look up the definitions of every noun, verb, and adjective in your sentences and revise each sentence in at least two different ways. Here are some tips:

  • Wherever there’s an -ly adverb, consider upgrading your verb.
  • Consider what each sentence denotes (literally means) vs. what it connotes (implies). Is it doing the work you intend? Browse a thesaurus to find other words that may capture your intended meaning(s) more accurately.
  • Moving from known information to new information is one way to ensure that you don’t lose readers. Could rearranging your sentences’ phrases clarify your meaning(s)?
  • Consider how the revised sentences compare with the originals. Did you learn anything new during this process?

If you try these exercises, comment below about how they worked for you, or hop over to my website and contact me.

Best,

Stephanie Jackson

A nature-loving creative, Stephanie Jackson writes poems, articles, picture books, middle-grade novels, and more. Her nonfiction has been published in Cricket magazine and her poems have been published in The Dirigible Balloon and various literary journals including Touchstones, where she’s been a contributing poetry editor. Professional affiliations include the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and The Authors Guild. In 2025, she’s graduating from Utah Valley University with her English degree, emphasis in creative writing. She interacts with the kidlit community on Twitter as @canoesandcosmos, and you can read more at StephanieWritesforKids.com.

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