Greystone Kids | Daddy Mojo

Drawing Outdoors, aims for STEM but hits the wrong stream

Artistic freedom is at the intersection of Why Am I Creating This Street and Who Is This For Lane. Drawing Outdoors is an illustrated book about a fabulous teacher at a rural school and her very creative students. The pupils gather in the remote single-room house from a variety of trails that snake across the piedmont area. It’s a special day because the kids are told that their lessons will be outside. They’re going to explore, draw things in nature, imagine shapes and expand their horizons. Drawing Outdoors will appeal to lots of elementary-aged students, but there’s one elephant that’s presented early in the book that will water down most of the fun. You’re in for a time if you miss this because the kids won’t, and once they see it you’ll lose all control of the classroom, and the grand message of the book will be lost.

The goal of Drawing Outdoors is creative art interpretation, it succeeds in that, but has an illustration that some won’t be able to get past.

You’re in trouble with some kids if they read this

Tapwe and the Magic Hat, Indigenous fable fiction with a grin

Let’s tell a pop culture-savvy upper elementary school student that they’re going to read a book about the Kree and that it also involves a trickster. This trickster isn’t 100% evil and their acts of kindness are as unpredictable as their tricks. Based on that rough description they’re apt to think that they’re reading a mash-up between Marvel space aliens and Loki. However, Tapwe and the Magic Hat is a much more grounded fable about the Plains Cree indigenous people who made up a majority of the population of North America hundreds of years ago.

Tapwe and the Magic Hat, an elementary chapter book that threads the line between fable, magic, life lessons, tricky creatures and more.

Fear not the cultural tales that will entertain

Inside In, is hypnotic photo-oriented STEM for six and up

Kids are inherently curious and that’s a fact that applies to every child regardless of age. Rare is the book that makes middle school and elementary school students equally curious. Either the book is too simple for older readers, too advanced for younger readers, has content that’s in-between the two demographics or simply just is not interesting. Inside In is a book that immediately grabs the attention of kids aged six through 14 and even north of that. It’s a coffee table book for STEM-minded folks, as well as, those who simply like to take their mind on a trip. The subtitle of the book, X-Rays of Nature’s Hidden World, gives you the immediate reason as to why kids will be engrossed in it.

Inside In sounds like a typo, instead, it’s a photo-centric book on X-Rays and how they can show the art of things hidden in plain sight.

Art by another nam is just an x-Ray

Do You Know Where the Animals Live?, animal questions kids actually have

A book whose title asks a question owns a special spot to those kidlit readers. Do You Know Where the Animals Live? is a children’s book from Peter Wohlleben, who young readers might know from The Hidden Life of Trees or The Inner Life of Animals. This is our first time reading one of his books and the difference in how he approaches nature content, relative to how some readers might be used to reading about it is immediate and respectful.

Do You Know Where The Animals Live? is a smart, STEM-centered animal book for curious kids who want to ask and read questions about critters.

Looking for a smart book on animals for ages 9 and up?