STEM | Daddy Mojo

Lonely Planet Kids Let’s Go Rock Collecting: fun, go-to edutainment

The rabbit hole is a metaphor that I use in class a lot. It’s really fun explaining that to a group of elementary school students. The older students more readily understand it, but are less likely to enjoy the thrill of following it. Lonely Planet Kids Let’s Go Rock Collecting is the best kind of rabbit hole for mid-elementary through mid-middle school ages. The content, as well as, the enjoyment in Rock Collecting can demo much higher, but that’s if audiences are able to look past its young-skewing illustrations.

Let’s Go: Rock Collecting is a field resource guide that demands to be used and experienced by ages eight through middle school.

Rock on young STEM people

Lot and Lots of Ocelots make math students wish they had it earlier

Why do I need to remind our 14-year-old of his multiplication tables? He’s “on level”, got a B in eighth-grade math, but I’m still reminding him of what 8 x 8 or what 64 divided by 8 is. Something is amiss in the state of middle school mathematics. Lot and Lots of Ocelots: A Skip Counting Book does not have this problem. If anything, Lots and Lots of Ocelots is the pre-school and early-elementary school- kryptonite to a problem that could vex kids in four-to-seven years.

Lot and Lots of Ocelots: A Skip Counting Book is the fun, effortlessly educational book that delayed middle school math students secretly wish that they had seven years earlier.

I say skip, you say count, Skip, count, skip count

Mushrooms and Company sets the reference STEM mold to fun for ages 8 and up

My pseudo-critical thinking lessons to high school students sometimes challenge them. I do provide answers, but I prefer to have students find the path or the solution, themselves. Jokes, stories and raw enthusiasm can lead people to learn in a manner where they want to, as opposed to they have to. Mushrooms and Company takes the former road. Educators, parents and some students will recognize the look of Mushrooms and Company.

Mushrooms and Company doesn’t cap the fun. It’s reference smart, clever text, witty illustrations and photographic icks for ages 8 and up.

Smart, without using the fungi homophone

To Activate Space Portal, Lift Here-produces giggles for the read-aloud

If Daddy Mojo did an annual top 10 list, To Activate Space Portal, Lift Here would be in that list. It’s a picture book that practically reads itself. The book’s cover reels in older audiences, as well as, those sophisticated folks who appreciate Bat Boy and his origin. Bat Boy was on the cover of Weekly World News in 1992. He was a boy who resembled a bat and was found in a West Virginia cave. The cover of To Activate Space Portal, Lift Here has a more scientific, glossier, STEM-centric appeal for the most part, but then has a giant star on it inviting people to “Be the FIRST to meet alien life-forms!”. It’s that bit of over-the-top cheese that sold WWN and helps sells To Activate Space Portal, Lift Here.

To Activate Space Portal, Life Here is an illustrated book that will be your Pre-K through early elementary kid’s best friend.

This will get kids smiling-and sneaking off with the book

Gird your loins for The Gland Factory, you’ll wish it was twice as long

Have you seen Inside Out or Inside Out 2? Both of those movies did a fabulous job in explaining emotions. They were especially effective with those complicated ones, like anxiety and jealousy. The Gland Factory: A Tour of Your Body’s Goops, Juices and Hormones is the literary sibling by another mother to those movies. This is a book that’s funny, legitimately LOL funny on so many levels that you’ll begrudgingly find yourself learning something in-between a chuckle, grin, guffaw or laugh. Author Rachel Poliquin proves that she knows her audience because The Gland Factory is sufficiently gross enough to attract upper-elementary through middle school readers.

The Gland Factory straddles the line between reference book and graphic novel in a funny, LOL, and educational way that kids will want to experience.

You’ll want to go back to your 10 YO self and read this

Bud Finds Her Gift is a beautiful nature book without the guilt

The intersection of picture and illustration book is a tricky one that only publishing executives know how to successfully navigate 100% of the time. Bud Finds Her Gift is a lovely book that could be seen in either one of those categories by some people. Does the text do more of the heavy lifting or it that left up to the illustrations? The answer to that question determines if it would be classed as an illustrated book or a picture book. Granted, as the end of the day, other than the author, illustrator, and publisher, who really cares? It’s when you trip over a book like Bud Finds Her Gift that you want to describe it accurately.

Bud Finds Her Gift is an illustrated book that takes advantage of its luxurious, approachable art and succinct, but impactful text, to entertain kids in a soft message book.

Calculating Chimpanzees is smarter-than-average STEM book that rewards readers

The educator wonk in me loves books that aren’t scared to display their intelligence. The realist in me knows something that’s too smart will scare off some readers. The second book in the Extraordinary Animals series is Calculating Chimpanzees, Brainy Bees, and Other Animals with Mind-Blowing Mathematical Abilities. That’s a mouthful of a title and it has the intellect to back up. Not that a reference, non-fiction book aimed at elementary school readers has a beef with anybody, other than ignorance.

Calculating Chimpanzees, Brainy Bees, and other Animals with Mind-Blowing Mathematical Abilities is STEM for kids that’s accessible, with more of a scientific, narrative flow than some its over-the-top brethren.

This book (and the animals listed therein) are smarter than some of my students

Night Night Tyrannosaurus, board book cutes with big-kid STEM

Back in my day board books were just about caterpillars, shapes and colors. Babies, crawlers and toddlers have it so good today. Night Night Tyrannosaurus and Night Night Ladybug are board books that swim with today’s books for young demographics. Tyrannosaurus and Ladybug each have a different focus, with one being on shapes and the other on colors. It has the mandatory aspects of education, but wraps it in the pleasantries of dinosaurs or insects. My four-year-old self describes this as a win/win when it comes to board books.

Night Night Tyrannosaurus is a board book that uses some go-to elements for toddlers and crawlers, but adds a little STEM.

Night night toddlers, hello Stem curiosity