STEM Books: Educational, Fun, and Great for Curious Young Minds!

We all know how valuable talking about STEM concepts with young children is. Today, there are so many different STEM books out there for the children in your life. It can feel impossible to know where to start when looking for that perfect book. So today, Tandem staff member Tania shares a few of her favorites. These books are great for any curious young child just starting to conduct their own experiments. Follow up any of these books with conversations about science and math for a great educational opportunity. Click on the links below to go to our Amazon affiliate pages to get copies of these for your home. Maybe you and your child will be inspired to start doing a little inventing of your own!

ROSIE REVERE ENGINEER

By Andrea Beaty/ Illustrated by David Roberts

This book is about a young girl named Ada who is very curious and has many questions about how everything works. With those questions comes a desire to figure out all the answers which helps develop her critical thinking skills. She thinks of a hypothesis, does all the research, and constructs her own experiments. I love this book because one should always be inspired to figure out the answers to our daily questions; continuously discovering new things. This book is great in that it showcases that science is fun and anyone can be a great scientist.

Tandem Tip: This book introduces new vocabulary words like ‘hypothesis’, ‘quest’, and ‘pungent’. This allows the readers to learn those words and figure out if they have encountered that word in other books. It also introduces the concept of an experiment. You can ask your child if they have worked on a project and what the results were. It’s great for prediction questions and letting them use their imagination to come up with a result.

ADA TWIST SCIENTIST

By Andrea Beaty/ Illustrated by David Roberts

This book is about a young girl who dreams of becoming an engineer. She collects all the materials she can find to build her awesome creations. She is a bit shy and gets discouraged when her experiments are not successful but realizes if something doesn’t work you can always try again.  This book showcases that engineering is fun, and although sometimes you don’t get the results desired, you should continue striving to get it right and never give up. Children are encouraged to use their imagination and materials they find in their homes to create all kinds of cool new projects.

Tandem Tip: This book is great for asking open-ended questions! What do you think the results of this experiment will be? What would you do differently? It motivates readers to use their imagination and strengthen their critical thinking skills. I love using it to introduce new vocabulary words such as perplexed, dismayed, and engineer.

The Most Magnificent Thing

Written & Illustrated by Ashley Spires

This book is about a young girl, her puppy, and their adventure in making the most magnificent thing. She plans out what she wants to create, collects the materials, and begins to build. There were a few attempts that did not result in what she wanted and that frustrated her a bit. After stepping away from the projects and coming back, she realized she might not have yet created the most magnificent thing but she has done some right things in each project. I really enjoy this book because we don’t always get the results we want at first, but that doesn’t mean we give up, we see what has been working and move forward with another idea.

Tandem Tip: This book is great for building critical thinking skills and asking questions. What do you think she is building? How would you fix that project? It also helps with discussing social-emotional topics like anger and excitement. It’s also great for teaching the concept of chronological order since the pictures are set up to demonstrate all the steps in the project.