illustrated STEM books

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”

Exoplanets, STEM that reaches wide from elementary to high

Exoplanets: A Guide to the Worlds Outside our Solar System is illustrated wonderment at the planets that reside in another neighborhood.

Somehow or another, Exoplanets: A Guide to the Worlds Outside our Solar System snuck past my review radar. Oh it landed in our office, but it gravitated towards our reference books and not in the ‘new’ books to review area. Exoplanets prematurely made its way into our ‘forever’ book stack, instead of the working book column that gets cycled through and written up. It certainly would’ve helped had we read Exoplanets when it was initially released because at that time we were planning our 2023 Dragon Con interviews. At that event we chatted with a handful of scientists researching conditions on various planets and the propulsion methods that astronauts would use to get there. Even though Exoplanets is an illustrated book, a medium that’s stereotypically thought of as a children’s book; it’s testament to the equally correct belief that just because the book is intended for children, it can reach far beyond its target audience.

Space, the frontier is calling you.

Anglerfish The Seadevil of the Deep, fun STEM for one and all

Fish aren’t inherently evil or bad. However, if you were to pose the question of what’s the evilest fish of them all then the Anglerfish would surely be in that mix. If nothing else, then that glowing light that’s on the end of the fishing rod on their head would qualify them by some people’s classification. If you didn’t know what an Anglerfish was before, then that description certainly painted exactly which fish we’re talking about. Anglerfish, The Seadevil of the Deep is an illustrated book by Elaine M. Alexander with illustrations by Fiona Fogg. This is on the STEM side of illustrated books and presents this mysterious fish in a way that will entertain, make kids curious, and drop little nuggets of knowledge that they’ll gleefully share with their friends.

Anglerfish: The Seadevil of the Deep is an illustrated book that examines a mysterious creature and makes it an unlikely hero.

C’mon in, the water’s fine

Invented by Animals, a fabulously illustrated biomimicry STEM jam for 7+

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.

Invented By Animals, a very intelligent illustrated book on biomimicry, animal adaptations and STEM that 7 and up will want to read.

The nexus of smart and simple, in a biomimicry blanket