Daddy Mojo used to teach. Being an ex educator he’s interested in many things about education, such as teaching policies, best practices and bureaucracy.
Well, color me surprised when I found We The People And the President. It was in my office, tucked away in a corner where the graphic novels usually hang out. It’s a mystery how it ended up there that I attribute to my youngest son cleaning the office that I should’ve tidied before this time. I say this as a sense of surprise because this is an engaging, easy-to-read reference book that offers up tidbits of government information on every page.
Teach a child a foreign language and the first things that they’ll remember is the profanity, slang or pickup lines. In other news: kids who only study one year of Spanish make the world’s worst interpreters. As a testament to that, it’s been more than 25 years and I can still say “you’re very cute” in Norwegian. The gross facts from reference books, those strange blurbs about animals that they’ll never see are always the first ones to get read. How-To-Read Super Gross is a book series that leans into that tendency and gives it a big, yucky hug. What’s In Your Body? is the big font combination of photographs and illustrations and witty dialogue that emerging readers crave.
I taught a fifth-grade student who drew detailed illustrations of automobiles in his spare time. They were surprisingly intricate, exterior drawings of cars with some having overview representations of their engines. While many kids who are that age like cars, this student’s passion and talent certainly went to the next level. Inner Workings is an engineer’s look at how just over two dozen things that kids see on a daily basis work. The illustrations in the book mainly consist of cross-section pictures that are done in a classic-retro style. It’ll initially draw in those mechanical engineer kids, as well as those who are just curious about how the soft-serve ice cream machine works.
Pound for pound, page for page, Foldout Anatomy has the most entertaining information in a STEM reference book that we’ve seen in months. Yeah, there are lots of qualifiers in that statement, but getting kids to willingly read non-fiction is necessary, but can be challenging. Foldout Anatomy is an interactive book aimed at upper-elementary through middle school students, with enough tidbits of knowledge to entertain and educated those older souls who wander into its pages.
STEAM Tales The Wizard of Oz is not a word-for-word retelling of the classic book by L. Frank Baum. Nor is it a twisted version of the Yellow Brick that changes the tone and heart of the story in favor of accentuating certain characters. This is a truncated version of The Wizard of Oz text that inserts four instances of science, and two STEAM activities for kids to do in each chapter. It’s not as far-fetched or as uninteresting as you might think, let’s take a look at an example.
Koalas are the cutest things on Earth that people outside of Australia will never see in real life. They also smell like the worst parts of a wet pug. Koala, A Natural History and an Uncertain Future is a narrative look at these marsupials that are only able to eat one thing. And even then, that Eucalypti tree might not be the correct species, which means that our cuddly little friend won’t eat it. Throughout history the koala has almost been an afterthought; when Europeans first landed in Australia they didn’t notice them for a decade and it took another 20 years for them to actually be studied.
Illustrated books can also be reference books. Aliens is one that fits in that category, although given its subject title and alluded subject matter you’re right to be suspicious. The key to where upper-elementary students will get the most from the book is in the book’s full title. Aliens, Join The Scientists Searching For Extraterrestrial Life is more about the science-based aspects around aliens, rather than the green basketball-playing men in our imagination.
If you’re older than 12 trips around the sun then you know the answer to that, but you may not know why. Actually, you may not even know the answer to it, you’ve just stopped caring or have moved on to less bathroom-centric queries. Is It Okay To Pee In The Ocean? is the most comprehensive look at going number one that elementary school kids will experience. It’s a surprisingly entertaining STEM read and runs deep with scientific research and credibility, so much so that those middle school students will enjoy the book also.
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