In a middle-elementary class recently I went over the fascinating story about wall crawlers. It’s an amazing and true tale about entrepreneurship, luck, and not giving up. The technology might not be directly created from animals, but its hypnotic appeal sure was inspired by them. The closest parallel to that toy in Invented By Animals are the pages on the tree frog. The presentation in the book will immediately appeal to those middle-elementary readers. The vocabulary might be a bit much for them, but those fourth, and especially those fifth-grade readers will have a field day with this book. Invented By Animals will also introduce the fabulous new word, biomimicry, a term that they’ll learn a lot more about in their STEM classes in the coming years.
Wide Eyed Editions does an excellent job with content like this. We’ve been reading 50 Wacky Things Animals Do to classrooms for years and it never fails to entertain. Invented By Animals takes a slightly more mature take on animals and focuses on the inventions that they’ve inspired. Mature is the wrong word, this book isn’t as silly, has bigger vocabulary, and focuses on the STEM angles that these animals inadvertently provide us with. It does all of that for ages nine and up and is ridiculously entertaining.
The book starts off with a brief letter of introduction from a frog who explains that those critters living in nature have used materials without producing waste, in addition to making the most of their environment to prosper and reproduce. Granted, the termite never invented the computer, much less the fax machine, but they have managed to create an underground world complete with its own version of air conditioning, cafeteria, and nursery.
Did you know that the jumbo squid has self-repairing teeth? Yeah, big whoop, as long as it doesn’t eat me you say. But what if humans could invent our own version of their technology and repair our own body parts or fix consumable goods just by adding water? Now that would be pretty cool and I bet that technology isn’t too far off in the future. It would mean less waste and potentially healthier humans.
Think about the slug. It is disgusting on some level, but also amazing. Its slime simultaneously allows it to be sticky and slippery, depending on how you approach it. If the slug is climbing something then it’s sticky. If you’re a predator trying to eat it then it’s slippery. Now imagine that said gluey aspect could be transferred to humans externally or internally when they need to have skin or organs attached to something.
Now take these instances, include 40 or so more and you’ve got an idea of how much of a fun, STEM-centric rabbit hole Invented By Animals is. Inside cover has dozens of colorful animals that are drawn in a manner that’s appealing to elementary school students but are surrounded with complex math formulas that give those same ages a glimpse at how smart the book treats them. The pages are printed on thicker than average paper, it’s not construction paper grade, but this also adds to the playful sense of the book.
Some of the pages are broken up to where they cover more detailed aspects of one animal’s characteristics. These pages are written in the first person tense and tell the animal’s story and how it uses their special ability in the wild. There are some pages that highlight things that a couple of animals might be able to do, like building things, recycling, or inspiring robot designs that humans can create.
Invented By Animals is an illustrated book that’s great for mid-elementary through middle school. The latter category is especially impressive because of the content that kids can learn. Those older students will jokingly look at the book and think that they know the stuff in it, but will walk away knowing that they learned something, even if they don’t tell you.
Invented By Animals is by Christiane Dorion with illustrations by Gosia Herba and available on Wide Eyed Editions, an imprint of Quarto Knows.
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