STEM | Daddy Mojo

Bird Girl: Inspiring Young Minds through Nature and Art

Why should students care about the life story about a woman who lived more than a century ago and studied birds? Gene Stratton-Porter is well-known in ornithology, but outside of that arena you probably haven’t heard of her. This is one of the things about well-made illustrated books that make the genre so much more than it appears to be. Bird Girl: Gene Stratton-Porter Shares Her Love of Nature with the World doesn’t break any new ground in regards to the story, even though it’s one young audiences don’t know. At it’s core, the book is about finding your way and exploring what you love. Instead, this is a great book because of the unknown variable (Gene Stratton-Porter) and the illustrations by Rebecca Gibbon that are used to tell her life story.

Bird Girl is an illustrated book about a woman that kids won’t know, but whose topic they’ll love and is in a package they’ll enjoy.

Birds, passion, nature and photography

Rube Goldberg’s Big Book: STEM Fun for Young Builders

For a children’s concept that’s seemingly so simple, it took me years to understand it. In theory I should love Rube Goldberg. I love books and the idea of engineering, tinkering with things, plus what’s not to love about Rube Goldberg? It’s like steam punk. You’ve rig up everyday objects and arrange them so that their energy will make an impact on something, like opening a door or squeezing toothpaste out of the tube. It’s a simple act made needlessly, but entertainingly, complex. Rube Goldberg’s Big Book of Building solves the issue that I had with the process on the very first page.

It took Rube Goldberg’s Big Book of Building to finally get it through to me how it works. This oversized, reference book is funny and loaded with can-do, simple machines for all ages.

It’s rubetactular and done with things that already have in the house

Like No Other, illustrated animal book magic for elementary school

Ask an upper-elementary student to do a report on something and they’ll pick the strangest, creepiest, most uncommon one in the book. They might determine who they’ll research by how gross their name is, how ugly they are or how remote their habitat is, thus Brazilian Spitting Death Spider Monkeys of the word unite. Like No Other: Earth’s Coolest One-Of-A-Kind Creatures is an illustrated book for middle-elementary ages through lower-middle school that’s mostly creepy and not too much common.

Like No Other, an illustrated book on strange animals who are the last ones in their family tree uses art and oddity to succeed.

The power of strange animals…..for the win!

Mousetronaut Saves the World is cute and smart for early elementary school

We didn’t read the first or second illustrated book in the Mousetronaut series. Having read Moustronaut Saves the World, it’s not necessary. One of the main Mousetronauts, Meteor has been to space before. That fact is referenced more than a couple of times in the book. He’s been to space before and has just the knowledge set to save Earth from the asteroid on a collision course with the planet. Thankfully, the flight director of the James Webb Space Telescope has a big plan that is dependent on little astronauts.

Mousetronaut Saves the World is an illustrated book with space action, mouse hijinks and wondrous adventure for early elementary ages.

Set phasers to fun for early elementary

The Inventor’s Workshop, STEM-fun for potato chip and cat video kids

The potato chip and cat video test is gauging whether or not a kid will want to read a book based on just one page. Because, much like a potato chip or a cat video, you can’t eat or watch just one. Some might relate better to the M&M or slice of pizza test, but the latter is far too large for repeated snacking, isn’t it? The Inventor’s Workshop: How People and Machines Transformed Each Other is a wonderful book that crosses through reference material, a loose time travelling narrative, countless blurbs of digestible information and detailed illustrations that channel a search for a lanky, bespectacled, poofy-haired, Brit who is hiding in plain sight.

The Inventor’s Workshop is a fun, easy-to-read illustrated book about inventors, their inventions, and how they’ve morphed over time.

Resistence is futile

Bounce! A Scientific History of Rubber-STEM story and fun for ages 6 and up

This is a thick book. Why is this book so thick? It’s either loaded with fluff or has too many white pages. Alas, it is thick, but its physical pages are thicker than the average illustrated book, plus it’s loaded with fun, easy-to-understand, STEM facts about the evolution and process of rubber. To those first reactions I say, don’t be intimidated by its thickness. Instead, just enjoy the fact that Bounce! A Scientific History of Rubber is able to create a non-fiction, linear story with STEM nuggets woven in that young readers won’t be turned off by. It can be challenging to get young readers to accept illustrated books that don’t have unicorns or animals in it, thus the first hurdle towards getting them in the book is not getting in the way.

Bounce! A Scientific History of Rubber is an illustrated book that gleefully dances between narrative story and a STEM primer for ages six and up.

Bounce! Before it was a verb that the kids say “to leave”

Exploring Nature and Learning: A Review of ‘The Den That Octopus Built’

We’ve been working with our 12-year-old on context clues and how to better understand them. Whenever I’m with high school ELA students I work with them on context clues, albeit in a slightly more direct tone. That could fall under the category of “read the room” or being able to infer what happens in a story due to something else occurring. The Den That Octopus Built is a smart illustrated book that tells a grand story with minute details that older readers will get the first time, and younger audiences will latch onto after one reading.

The Den That Octopus Built is a poetic illustrated book that sucks young readers in with its eight tentacles of knowledge and fun and doesn’t let go.

A smarter, more lyrical, mouse and cookie adventure

Wildlife Crossings-nature born STEM gets kids thinking without realizing it

The extent to which children think about animals crossing the road stopped when they answered the question about the chicken. And even then that query, and its many derisions, are tiresome, repetitive, and work for the five-year-old audience one time only. Wildlife Crossings: Protecting Animal Pathways Around the World is an illustrated book that will fascinate elementary ages and get them to think, yes actually think about something that they’ve never thought about before.

Wildlife Crossing, an illustrated book that wears its STEM on its sleeve, but allows readers to think for themselves.

But what if the chicken couldn’t cross the road?