STEM | Page 3 of 6 | Daddy Mojo

How Was That Built, beautiful, architect, STEM food for ages eight and up

A friend of ours is a nuclear scientist. Illustrated books are for children and present simple content or fairy tales for young readers. One of those statements is false.

Intelligent illustrated books are an excellent way to teach. They can present advanced content on a level that’s not intimidating to younger audiences, and maybe, just maybe, inspire someone to change the world.* How Was That Built?: The Stories Behind Awesome Structures is an illustrated book that wears its intelligence on its sleeve and is the sort of book that’ll answer questions, inspire curiosity, and plant architectural seeds that’ll bloom in two or three decades.

How Was That Built? is a brilliant illustrated book on the construction, science and engineering behind bridges and buildings around the world.

You want your children to be more intelligent than you…,don’t you?

The Brilliant Calculator, STEM illustrated magic on leveling up the power grid

The Clarke Calculator is something that I’ve never seen, touched or used, yet its application is demonstrated everywhere I go. It’s not a regular calculator. Heck, it’s not even a scientific calculator. The Brilliant Calculator: How Mathematician Edith Clarke Helped Electrify America follows Edith Clarke’s lifelong passion for numbers and her specific invention that helped electric power wires handle to juice needed for a growing America.

The Brilliant Calculator is an unlikely and empowering STEM illustrated story about Edith Clarke, a woman who invented something that few of us will use, but all of us take advantage of.

Stories like these are what make kids think outside of the box

Josephine and Her Dishwashing Machine, cleans up on a little known inventor

Any teacher that has had to read umpteen hundred essays on the same inventors knows my pain. It’s the exercise in rolling your eyes when the student says that their essay will be on the same inventor, who invented that thing that seems to be a go-to for elementary school kids. There’s a void of books aimed at that audience who need to know about more people that history might have forgotten. Josephine and Her Dishwashing Machine is an illustrated book that joyously plugs that hole.

Josephine and Her Dishwashing Machine is an illustrated book that examines the inventor of an appliance most of us use daily, but know nothing about its origin.

Hello history, it’s great to meet you

Her Eyes on the Stars, great story, but it’s been done better before

The story of Maria Mitchell is a fabulous one for many reasons. It’s about a young woman who has always loved studying the night sky and the objects that occupy its space. In the mid-1850s she was living in Nantucket and she’s noticing something amiss in the darkened sky. It’s a blur, a cottonball blur of a thing that’s set against crystal clear objects that are perfectly in focus. Her Eyes on the Stars: Maria Mitchell, Astronomer is the story about her childhood fascination with the sky; and her young adult life when she sees what just might be the first comet discovered by an American.

Her Eyes on the Stars: Maria Mitchell, Astronomer is an illustrated book with an awesome story worth seeking out, but this version could’ve used a softer touch.

Deja vu, except, not as good as the first time

The Astronaut’s Guide to Leaving the Planet, 6th-grade go-to space project gold

Don’t tell yourself no. There are many dozens of wisdom nuggets in The Astronaut’s Guide to Leaving the Planet, but that one is a favorite of ours. Being an astronaut is a job that’s easily identifiable to an elementary-aged student. An analyst or working in public relations are amorphous jobs that are challenging to quantifiably explain what you do in a way that those age’s will understand. But an astronaut that’s a job that everyone knows, even if they don’t know how to become one. For a book centered on leaving the planet, The Astronaut’s Guide to Leaving the Planet has street-cred galore.

The Astronaut’s Guide to Leaving the Planet is an entertaining chapter book that’s custom made for 5th or 6th graders to learn about an out-of-this-world profession.

What Would the Astronaut do?

A Walk Through The Rain Forest, is flora and fauna-forest perfection

Back to that art class that I was asked to teach the other week. One of the students produced an illustration that was absolutely stunning. It was realistic, which led me to immediately mention hyper-realistic as a way to describe certain illustrations. By a happy coincidence, I had A Walk Through The Rain Forest in my backpack and showed them some examples of this student’s work, but elevated to the next level. A Walk Through The Rain Forest is an illustrated book where the text isn’t simple, but it does tell a simple story.

A Walk Through The Rain Forest is an illustrated book whose subtle text and hyper realistic art willfully drags you through the dirt.

Stop, collaborate and stare at the images

Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design, what kids 10 and up are curious about

The other day I was put into art class as the substitute teacher. The assignment was rather simple and as I was providing them their different options I was using terms like disparate, negative space, abstract, hyper-realism, scale or symmetry. Then, to illustrate what the students looked like, I brought in a deer and turned on my car’s headlights that illuminated its bulbous eyes. Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design was originally published as a hardback book and is now available in soft cover. Students, don’t get freaked out because a book has now been released in a format that’s more palatable for you. This is an illustrated, reference book that’s effortless to look at and presents its information in page nuggets that educate through entertainment.

Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design gives what ages 10 and up know is around them, but gives it a name and explains why they like it.

Design you seek is it?

Slow Down and Be Here Now, lyrical, illustrated STEM around us

Don’t judge a book by its cover. Repeat that to yourself a couple of times and look at Slow Down and Be Here Now: More Nature Stories to Make You Stop, Look, and Be Amazed by the Tiniest Things. You’re thinking that it’s a book about nature poems. It’s got the oversized look to where it certainly could be loaded with poems about nature. The cover is softly illustrated and shows dandelion seeds being blown off from its host; while a rodent of some sort looks on from a neighboring plant. However, open the book and you’ll see seeds of STEM-based fun that lets young readers know that this is not rhyme-based reads for short attention span theater.

Slow Down and Be Here Now is an illustrated, leisurely look at the plants and animal STEM around us.

Illustrated STEM, but in a lyrical, non-poetry way