STEM | Page 4 of 7 | Daddy Mojo

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

Detector Dogs, Dynamite Dolphins, and More Animals With Super Sensory Powers

The thing about getting kids to enjoy subjects that they otherwise might shun is effectively baiting the hook. Those students are attracted to the graphics, photographs or obvious sense of humor that the book has and then start thumbing through it. After a couple of pages they realize that it’s not the death trap of fun that they thought it would be, and start accepting the fact that reading can be fun. Detector Dogs, Dynamite Dolphins, and More with Super Sensory Powers wants to be that book and firmly plants the idea for that on its cover, but is it?

Detector Dogs is a STEM book that’s heavy on knowledge and a deep dive into learned animal behavior for middle school science.

Middle school Stem or science kids c’mon in

How Poop Can Save The World, STEM-minded mental martial arts with a laugh

Most fifth and fourth-grade boys have one thing on their minds. Well, video games certainly occupy a segment of their cranial space, but there’s always one portion of grey matter that is at the ready with some bathroom humor. A fart noise, poop metaphor, bathroom memory, or something else wasteful is the currency for boys at a certain stage of their life. It’s disgusting, yes. However, Dog Man and Captain Underpants are successful at hitting those ages for a reason. They embrace that baseness and run with it. How Poop Can Save The World is a chapter book that’s geared for those ages, and slightly higher, that makes no apologies for its pictures of flying poop, stool-powered puns, or any other way to make readers smile about number two.

How Poop Can Save The World is a STEM chapter book that entertainingly hits those potty humor kids right where they need it.

I’m number one, you’re number two

Atom: The Building Block of the Universe is compact STEM happiness

If Andy Warhol designed a STEM book centered around small things he would’ve created Atom The Building Block of the Universe. Atom is a compact illustrated book that makes the complex seem simple but also acknowledges that it certainly can be confusing. It does this with absurd graphics, by comparing odd things and layering it all against a sea of dots that would make Nancy envious. *

Atom: The Building Block of the Universe is an illustrated book who compact size belies its intelligence and approachable nature.

The Atom is boring you say

Ready-To-Read Super Gross, baits the STEM hook for 2^nd and 3^rd graders

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.

Ready-To-Read Super Gross, What’s in Your Body? perfectly sets up and answers STEM things that first through third graders want to read and talk about.

TAstey STEm for ages 5 and up

Inner Workings, a cut-through, STEM, curiosity book for a couple of pages

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.

Inner Workings is a how-it’s-made book that’ll preach to the STEM, engineering crowd, but could’ve yelled at everyone with more narrative.

The STEM Choir rejoices, but it could’ve reached wider and higher