Education | Daddy Mojo

Waiting for the Dawn, gorgeous art and presentation via a fire lens

I love contrasting colors. The visual train wreck of colors that exist in negative space. It’s the canvas that’s blacker than a thousand midnights, with only the occasional blinking of some of the thousands, out of the millions, of stars and planets that you’re able to see. Waiting for the Dawn is a book that’s built for kids who think like that, but have a more Earth-centric perspective. It’s a question or thought that every elementary age kid has, and that’s what happens to the animals who live in the forest when there’s a fire?

Waiting for the Dawn is a gorgeous illustrated book that uses (mainly) duo-chromatic colors to tell the story of a fire, the forest and its rebirth.

Fire, let me stand next to your fire

STEMville: The Fast Lane, easy to look at, with a big kid brain

My son’s high school marching band chose F1 as the musical theme for next school year. There will be some Formula 1 props that move around, lots of trumpets, drummers doing their thing and kids with oodles of musical talent. The only thing I know about Formula 1 is that I regret not going to Monaco Gran Prix when I lived outside of Monte Carlo. Wait, I also know that F1 is coming to theaters in 2025 and that the cars are shaped very differently than stock cars. STEMville: The Fast Lane is the latest in the STEMville book series. It manages to entertain ages seven and (way) up, without making it too babyish for the younger readers, while not insulting the older readers who are learning something new.

STEMville: The Fast Lane, a timeless look at F1, Formula One racing in a busy, anthropomorphic town. It makes you curious about it via sharp illustrations and perfectly truncated text.

Resistance is futile

All About Brains: Engaging Kids with Neurodiversity

It would be glib to talk about this book around Halloween and have a zombie doing the narrating. Granted that could certainly draw in more curious readers than the actual topic about All About Brains. It’s an illustrated book that looks at brains the way that early to upper-elementary can relate to, if they wanted to read a book about neurodivergence. Woah, easy there elementary school reader, do you mean that this is a fun book about the very broad field of neurodiverse kids? In a way, that is correct, All About Brains takes a macro look at some of the differences in that field. It starts with a young girl as she starts her day with medicine and her younger sibling asking to have some of her medicine that helps ease her ‘brain sparkles’.

All About Brains: A Book About People, an illustrated book that lives in the world of edutainment on pediatric neurodiversity. It’s more fun than the name sounds.

Educating AND entertaining

Exploring Money Lessons in ‘I Am Money’ Book Review

From a distance, the cover to I Am Money looks like an anthropomorphic credit card, wearing big glasses in front of the Arc de Triumph. It seems like an odd fit because, if it’s money in front of the French landmark, wouldn’t it be a Euro? No, the money on the cover to I Am Money is certainly an American bill. Look closely at the upper left and the $20 can be seen plus the other shapes and scribbles that people associate with it. Right, I’m back on board, I love money, and young children need to learn about money-especially certain aspects of it. If I Am Money does that in a way that’s interesting and curious to young readers we have something that’ll cash in with that crowd.

I Am Money is a book on money for the carpet-time through third grade crowd that educates and teaches a lesson via fun and energy, without any guilt.

What do kids love but rarely understand?

What’s An IV?: A Child’s Guide to Getting Medicine Via a Drip

What is an IV? As an adult, I know what an IV does, and I have a vague idea of what goes into putting it in your arm. However, as a child, the concept of having an IV inserted into my arm would’ve scared me silly. This is where illustrated books such as What’s An IV? is an illustrated book intended for elementary school-aged children who need to have an IV put into their arm. It’s approachable and has the potential to put kids at ease about the process, at least as much as they can be.

What’s An IV? in the My Medical Process book series is the place to start as a way to introduce young kids to the way to drip medicine into the body.

Fear not the IV young ones

My Dear Sea: A Magical Illustrated Adventure

There’s a two-page spread in My Dear Sea that perfectly encapsulates the imagination of a child and how they see things. It’s just halfway through the book and shows a young girl running on the shore parallel to the sea. There are outcrops of sand dunes that poke out from the sea, towering above her, set against an impossibly ocean that’s a black as a thousand midnights at the bottom; but becomes that gorgeous light azul you only see in the Caribbean or near Lake Ohrid. The disparate chasm between shallow and deep probably doesn’t occur quickly, but kids imagine it to be that deep. My Dear Sea is an illustrated book about a young girl’s conversation with the sea, how she imagines it appear in its depths and the creatures that live there in her mind’s eye.

My Dear Sea is an immediate classic illustrated book about a girl and her trip to the sea that’s laden with illustrations that hook you.

What makes an illustrated book timeless and classic?

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

70 Puzzles You’ll Get Wrong: Insights from Puzzle Me Twice

The subtitle to this puzzle book by Alex Bellos is so true. I’m a relatively clever person so I approached each of the set ups in Puzzle Me Twice with, what I thought was, a calm head and a clear mind….and I got most of them incorrect. I rationalized it by saying that they were incorrect because once I read the correct answer I realized my response was too quick. Had I really taken my time the book would have confirmed to me the genius that I think I am. However, in my self-imposed course of humble pie, I jumped in the rabbit hole of Alex Bellos’ other puzzles and have lowered my genius peg down to humble puzzle novice.

Puzzle Me Twice is jammed with 70 deceivingly easy puzzles you’ll get wrong, but have fun doing them.

This is not the bad puzzle book that you seek