Recently in Books Category

Starting your summer break reading list? A new release from Mario Livio highlights notable "missteps" from well-known scientists.

Today in TIME Science & Space: "Science's Brilliant Blunders: How Oops Moments Became Eurekas", discussion of Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe by Mario Livio, author of The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World's Most Astonishing Number.

The adult non-fiction title offers an inside look at a few notable (and then notorious) moments in science history from five prominent science figures: Charles Darwin, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein.

For students, spin the conversation from blunders to accidents and failed experiments that yielded unexpected results and another realm of notable discoveries opens up and invites fun science-themed conversation for family dinner or the car ride home! Scientists are not always right, but being wrong can still result in forward motion. This is an important concept for students, especially when students do not always see their hypotheses supported by their experiments and projects. Science is often about testing, retesting, refining ideas, and looking at different angles.

See "Putty Science: Family Fun with Polymers" and "Encouraging and Inspiring Female Student Engineers" to get the conversation started.

While "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day" is officially celebrated in February, helping girls understand the creative world of engineering is important all year long. If you love to innovate, imagine, build, tinker, solve problems, or make things, engineering might be just the right area for you—or your student!

Do you like chocolate chip cookies? Maybe you make yours using a treasured family recipe, or, like many other people, maybe you use the recipe on the back of the bag of chocolate chips to make "Toll House Cookies." Chocolate chip cookies are a familiar dessert in many households and, arguably, an ingrained part of our culture, but this favorite kind of cookie is really less than a hundred years old!

Chocolate chip cookies are the result of innovation by Ruth Wakefield, one of the proprietors of the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts. In a hurry one day, legend has it that Ruth cut a few corners to save time while making a batch of chocolate butter drop cookies. Ruth mixed chunks of chocolate into the dough rather than using melted chocolate. The chunks did not completely melt during baking. With that first batch, Ruth spawned a cookie that would delight cookie and chocolate fans of all ages and would lead to Nestlé's development and production of chocolate chips. It's a story worth thinking about the next time you look at your favorite recipe and wonder what would happen if you changed things, tried something different, or otherwise altered your tried and true formula!

Ruth's story highlights ingenuity. She wasn't really looking to invent a completely new kind of cookie. Instead, she was looking for a better (and faster) approach. Once she tasted the results and saw the reaction of her customers to the cookie, she knew she had created something special. Nestlé knew it, too. In the end, Ruth wound up with a lifetime's supply of chocolate, and her recipe lives on with each package of Nestle chocolate chips.

The historical genesis of the chocolate chip cookie is interesting. You might have picked up bits and pieces of Ruth's story from your chocolate chips bag. But what about the origin of windshield wipers? Kevlar®? Liquid Paper®? Scotchguard^TM? Paper bags? The computer compiler? Behind each of these discoveries and inventions is the story of a female engineer, scientist, or inventor.

A History of Innovation and Invention by Women

Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women,
by Catherine Thimmesh, offers these stories, and many others, for readers of all ages. Chances are good that some of these stories of innovation and invention are ones you have not heard. You may know the product, but you may not know of the woman behind it or "how" the invention came about. Girls Think of Everything does an excellent job spinning tales that are fun to read, offer plenty of wow factor, and combine to paint a powerful and inspiring portrait of women in engineering. What do you think of when you think of an engineer? Girls Think of Everything may challenge your definition of engineers and engineering in a good way!

Some of the discoveries chronicled in Girls Think of Everything started with an accident; others were the result of determined research and development. Some of these inventions were by women working in labs; others were created by women out of necessity or from home. The book, illustrated by Melissa Sweet with engaging illustrations and collages that reinforce the subject matter of each story, invites readers to learn more about women who have made important contributions as inventors, engineers, and scientists. In pages at the front and back of the book, a timeline chronicles inventions and discoveries by women between 3000 B.C. and 1995. It's an impressive look at the role of female innovators, and the book, as a whole, is a wonderful collection for young women. Reading these stories is sure to amaze, inspire, and maybe even propel a future engineer to grab a laboratory notebook and put the steps of the engineering design process in action!

Educating and Supporting Tomorrow's Engineers

Engineers Week, a project of the National Engineers Foundation, and sponsored by companies like Motorola Solutions Foundation, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grumman, will take place February 17-23, 2013. A collaborative effort, the week encourages the education of students about engineering as a step toward increasing the number of students pursuing engineering degrees. Through community and school activities during this special week, students learn more about engineering and the many kinds of career opportunities that exist. The more models of female scientists and engineers we can provide for students during elementary and middle school, the more young women we can help encourage to explore paths in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. (Note: On the Engineers Week website, teachers can request free kits containing posters, suggested activities, and more, to help promote the week at school.)

Encouraging Female Engineers

February 21, 2013 is "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day." The day is an important part of Engineers Week, but the core concept behind introducing young women to engineering transcends the single day and has become an important cause, year-round, for organizations like Motorola Solutions Foundation. Raising awareness among young women about engineering as a creative, innovative, and collaborative field of study and encouraging and nurturing girls' interest in engineering is important every day, all year long.

The next time you use your windshield wipers on a rainy day, give a thought to Mary Anderson. If you don't know her story, check out Girls Think of Everything. Mary's story is one of many to share with students and family members.

For even more inspiration, watch the "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day" video, created by the National Engineers Foundation.

If your readers are fans of one comic format or another, you may find that science-themed manga titles are a welcome addition to your younger and middle students' summer reading lists.

In my house, manga and the graphic novel format rule. For years, my students have been devouring manga titles, a reality that made me even more thankful for the library early on when I realized they were zipping through titles in under an hour—and ready for more. With some favorite series containing 40-50 volumes, we've put our library account to sizzling use through the years. Although there's no Da Vinci-esque script involved, my students read backwards with the same ease as they do forwards.

While there are themes they prefer, I've discovered that their affinity for the genre—and the comic format—crosses all boundaries. We've read through the graphic novel shelves at the library and broadened our appreciation of traditional-style comics with healthy doses of classic and unforgettable strips like Calvin and Hobbes. Their willingness to read virtually anything presented in panels opens up exciting terrain when it comes to science content.

Cartoon-style Science

Many students, even students who are excellent readers, enjoy the comic genre (at large), which makes it wonderful that there are increasing numbers of titles available, including a wide range of science-themed graphic novels. There are cartoon-style collections of project ideas, comic book stories of science clubs and science-studded plots, biographies presented in graphic novel format, and illustrated guides devoted to major areas of science.

Earlier this week, we posted a super-sized list of great summer reading selections for older students and adults from the popular science shelves. That list included Feynman, a graphic novel biography of Richard Feynman, co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 and known for his eccentric personality, spotlighted both in famous classroom lectures and in a series of autobiographical titles. For readers with an interest in physics, quantum mechanics, subatomic particles, and nanotechnology, Feynman may be an interesting launching point. As a follow-up—or a starting point in a different area of science—these titles from the "Manga Guide" series are ones your middle-to-upper-grade students might enjoy over the summer as a supplement to some hands-on exploration.

• The Manga Guide to Physics
• The Manga Guide to Electricity
• The Manga Guide to Molecular Biology
• The Manga Guide to Relativity
• The Manga Guide to the Universe
• The Manga Guide to Biochemistry

Loose Science
When it comes to full-color graphic novels aimed at the younger audience and with few illusions of being truly educational, there are a range of titles for students to latch onto. From the Amulet series to Jellaby and Zita the Spacegirl, the genre is brimming with books to entice young and middle readers. Because many of these stories are quasi-science fiction in nature, science often lurks within, even if it isn't center stage. Reading about characters who are scientists, explorers, and inventors is a fun alternative to other character archetypes and might help engage students in their own science exploration—and in the possibilities offered by science-related career paths. Even Babymouse did a stint as a scientist before the team behind the series introduced Squish, the school-aged, Twinkie-eating amoeba who stars in a series dubbed "a tale of microscopic proportions" (see Super Amoeba, Brave New Pond, and The Power of the Parasite).

When science is presented as cool, fun, and often-accompanied by a bang, a bit of time travel, or a world-changing discovery, there's fertile ground for the imagination—and for growing awareness of science. For fun downtime reads for your middle readers, books that offer less textbook science and more story, you might consider graphic novels like The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook, Knights of the Lunch Table: The Dodgeball Chronicles (there's a science teacher in the mix), and The Knights of the Lunch Table #2: The Dragon Players (building robots takes center stage). Similarly, the titles in the Daniel Boom AKA Loud Boy series also have science, engineering, and invention as underlying themes. The kids who are part of this group each have a questionable super ability, but you'll find that there's something scientific afoot in each adventure. Or, for a greener spin on the graphic novel, Luz Sees the Light explores the importance of sustainability and reducing one's reliance on fossil fuels.

A Taste for More Traditional Books?

While the graphic novel format seems to have gone viral for many school-age readers, the format isn't for everyone. We'll be posting a list of summer choices for chapter books and novels for elementary and middle readers. Here are a few non-comic titles to get you and your students started:

• The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (fictional story of a young naturalist)
• Doyle and Fossey, Science Detectives (see our review)
• Who Was Thomas Alva Edison? (or Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Ben Franklin, etc.)
• The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe
• The Case of the Vanishing Golden Frogs: A Scientific Mystery
• The Magic School Bus series (Who can resist Ms. Frizzle and her science-traveling school bus? Look for chapter book versions for your elementary school readers.)
• Blockhead: The Life of Fibonacci
• Kakapo Rescue: Saving the World's Strangest Parrot or other titles from the Scientists in the Field Series
• Science Fair (a Dave Barry tale that puts a science fair project in the middle of an international espionage plot)

We would love to hear about science-themed titles you and your students enjoy!

Your students need to keep reading—all summer long. Reading helps fight summer brain drain, but if you encourage your students to read books with a science theme, the pages read do double duty. And you? If a popular science title isn't what you would typically grab for a vacation read, it might be time to shake up your summer reading. Science Buddies staff offers suggestions for engaging science-themed reads for tweens and up.

As our elementary school principal wrapped up his "morning circle" announcements a few weeks ago on the last day of school, he closed with: "And students, don't forget to read this summer. Every day." There were a few token groans around the circle, but I couldn't help but smile, happy to have had the critical importance of summer reading highlighted in that way—as a reminder to parents as well as to students. Statistics are clear that reading and math are two areas of learning at the most risk over the summer. I'm sure it's no coincidence that public libraries around the country offer prize-laden summer reading programs as incentive to keep kids reading. I remember a "bookworm" club years and years ago. When it comes to reading, not much has changed. What has changed is the availability of so many other things to do, to schedule, and to flip on, all of which can put time spent with a nose in a book on the back burner, for students and adults alike.

No matter what activities, vacations, camps, or schedules you keep during the swathe of summer days, make sure there is plenty of reading going on. As you help your students choose books and encourage them to read a few more chapters, be on the lookout for great science picks. Mix daily reading with science-themed books, and what do you get? The combination can be a recipe for exciting, immersive, eye-opening, mind-expanding summer reading. We encourage plenty of hands-on science exploration over the summer, both small ones and longer-term ones that bridge the days and develop throughout the break. But reading about science can also broaden a student's frame of reference and open up new paths of potential interest—for everyone in the family! Set a great example, and stock your own to-read shelf with some of today's most exciting popular science titles.

"Checking Out" Science

After reading Science Fair Season: Twelve Kids, a Robot Named Scorch... and What It Takes to Win last month and finding myself really caught up in the stories of the students profiled, I started pulling a wide range of science-themed books from the library shelves. In recent weeks, I have been surrounded by piles of science and math titles, stacks of books brimming with information on nests, spirals, chemistry, physics, poisons, biology, and more. With each one I picked up, I found myself hooked in different ways.

Nests: Fifty Nests and the Birds that Built Them has been open next to me for a number of days. The book is a beautiful collection of photos of birds nests—and their eggs. If you think all nests are woven baskets of twigs, you will find Nests an eye-opening and wonderful exploration of the amazing diversity, artistry, innovation, resourcefulness, adaptation, and sheer functionality encapsulated in the nests made by different kinds of birds. Twigs, man-made debris, saliva and spider webs only tap the surface of the range of materials used in nest construction, and each species builds nests that tell a story, in part, of the local habitat. Accompanying Beals' photos are short but thorough profiles of each species covering nest-building, mating, parenting, migration, and other distinguishing characteristics. This is a book birders of all ages, life-list or not, can savor.

Intrigued by the bevvy of kitchen chemistry titles on the market, I cracked open the pages of What Einstein Told His Cook 2, one of a series of books from Robert Wolke. In this volume, Wolke tackles a broad spectrum of questions from readers of his Washington Post column in categories like beverages, dairy and eggs, vegetables, seafood, and grains and carbohydrates. In response to seemingly simple but earnest questions, some of which bring up family kitchen lore handed down through the ages, Wolke explains the science that underlies everyday observations you can make in the kitchen. Wolke's approach targets the casual science reader and kitchen enthusiast. You might find an answer to a question you've wondered about, or an answer to something you've noticed but never thought to question. Ever asked why tea stored in the refrigerator turns cloudy?

What to Read

After scanning titles, reviews, and book blurbs on some favorite science-related and bookseller sites, I had scores of amazing-sounding titles I wanted to look up, check out, thumb through, curl up with, or share with my own students. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks or Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout, with its glow-in-the-dark cover, might be next on my to-read list, but I've also been wanting to read something by Jane Goodall, and my own interests leave me curious to see Field Notes on Science & Nature. Some titles are just tantalizing and intriguing, like Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History and The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements. But then there are titles exposing the dark side of plants, the underbelly of poison, and a beekeeper's efforts to save the bees. With so many popular science titles vying for attention, I asked the Science Buddies staff to share favorite titles they recommend for both high-school readers and adults. Their suggestions, shown below, contain both new and classic titles from popular science, and even a perennial science fiction favorite, that you and your older students may enjoy. We would love to hear your favorite science titles as well!

While you shouldn't always judge a book by its cover, here's our list of suggestions for summer science reading:

We will be posting other lists of some of our favorite middle and K-5 titles, including some graphic novels and manga, and some suggested math titles, so stay tuned!

Our "science history" notes this week at Facebook included mention of both Dian Fossey and Joy Adamson. Both women left behind inspiring legacies and volumes of experience gathered from living with, observing, and interacting with animals.

Born on January 16, 1932: Dian Fossey, a famed zoologist whose study of gorillas in Rwanda, Africa is chronicled in Gorillas in the Mist. The book is her own account of thirteen years spent living in an African rain forest and was also later made into a movie starring Sigourney Weaver.

Students can use the BLAST bioinformatics tool to examine the relationship between humans and our non-human relatives in the Neanderthals, Orangutans, Lemurs, & You—It's a Primate Family Reunion! genomics Project Idea.

Born on January 20, 1910: Joy Adamson, naturalist and author, best known (along with her husband George Adamson) for raising and training Elsa, an orphaned lioness, and eventually successfully releasing her into the wild. After Elsa, Adamson worked with other animals, including a cheetah and a leopard. Adamson chronicled her work in a number of books, beginning with Born Free (also made into a movie).

Teaching the family dog to shake hands or give a high five is (depending on the breed) likely far less dangerous than working with a wild animal, but students can begin to explore the ways in which animal trainers approach the process of teaching animals new skills or tricks by working through the Tricks for Treats: How Long Does It Take to Train Your Pet? project.

Making Connections

For a look at ways to turn a love of animals into a career, explore the following science career profiles: zoologist, animal trainer, park ranger, and veternarian.

For other exciting Project Ideas designed to let students explore science questions related to animals, see projects in Zoology, Biology, and Mammalian Biology.

Interested in reading other firsthand accounts from female scientists, zoologists, naturalists, and conservationists? You might also enjoy learning more about Jane Goodall's legendary work, chronicled in titles that include: Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe, My Life with the Chimpanzees, Africa in My Blood: An Autobiography in Letters: The Early Years.

(Science Buddies Project Ideas in Zoology are sponsored by the Medtronic Foundation.)

[Editorial Note: Amy, whose blog entry appears below, is one of several "Science Moms" at Science Buddies!]

We love our math and our science and our computers in our house, and when we see a description of a coin launcher made from a toilet paper roll and a piece of leftover balloon, it sticks in our heads until we try it. (Of course, concerned about the relative weight of a coin flying through the air at slingshot speed, I did advocate the launcher be tried with small LEGO bricks instead to minimize breakage and injury!) Risk of projectile damage aside, we enjoy our gadgets and a healthy number of "let's-see-how-or-if-it-works" moments, but we also love to read. Books, books, and more books line our shelves, spill out over the sides of buckets and baskets, peek out from under the seats in the car, and weigh down our bags when we travel.

My boys are three years apart, and so we've cycled through a few series entirely, twice. Some of those are elementary cult classics in their own rite. The A to Z Mysteries and The Magic Tree House series are two series that we read, start to finish, and then again. Other series have had transient roles in our out-loud reading. Geronimo Stilton, Cam Jansen, Horrible Harry, Jigsaw Jones.... We've read them.

If you're noticing a trend toward mysteries, you're right. Statistically, it's been the most popular read-aloud genre in our house this year. That doesn't mean we haven't read scads of other things. We have. But a great mystery series... can be golden, and I've spent a lot of library trips scouring the shelves looking for another series that will catch first-grade attention, inspire, excite, and tide us through another set of weeks of bedtime reading.

A Lucky Find!

When I stumbled over a Doyle and Fossey, Science Detectives book by Michelle Torrey, I was thrilled to find another "mystery"-styled series that, like Jigsaw Jones and Cam Jansen, features two students (one male and one female) who have hung up their shingle as detectives. As soon as I started, I realized there is something special about these—especially from the science angle and for a Science Mom!

The first story I read told the tale of a fellow classmate (not the most likable girl) who calls for help because, basically, she's stuck in a laundry chute where she fell trying to grab her phone as it fell in. After checking things out on the scene, Doyle and Fossey head back to their "lab," do a bunch of research, draw up some diagrams, form their hypothesis, put together a plan, and then head back to, basically, create a small baking-soda-and-vinegar-inspired explosion to blast her free. Case solved, scientific explanation offered by the detectives, payment made in full (though not in money), and they are on to the next case. (Each book contains several different cases to solve.)

I've read a number of the Doyle and Fossey Science Detectives lineup since, and I love that the stories themselves are full of science and serious kids who do their best thinking in their lab, apply science to every problem, and take their decaf coffee black (no hot chocolate, thanks). Doyle's got wild, stand-up hair that is the color of cinnamon toast, and he's often found monitoring his own experiments and recording his observations in his lab notebook. Nell Fossey, on the other hand, is a naturalist, with a jungle-esque bedroom full of aquariums, terrariums, and cages. To add to their innate interest in scientific investigation, the duo is lucky to have parents with skills and jobs that fit perfectly into supporting and encouraging their young detectives, and they have an amazing reference book that always has the perfect chapter to help guide their scientific problem-solving when they are faced with a new case.

In the Name of Hands-On Exploration

In the back of each book, there are tips and brief hands-on experiments that give students and families a bit more information about the science that played a part in the cases—and a way to test the concepts in an age-appropriate way. Each "Activities and Experiments for Super-Scientists" back-section is in the neighborhood of 20 pages, and some of the basic info appears in each volume. In addition to fun activities, these pages cover things like the importance of a lab notebook (and how to use one), the scientific method, and hypotheses. All of these science "staples" are things you see Doyle and Fossey use and do—and they are cool doing it! The projects themselves (which tie in with the stories in each book) offer an easy starting point for families to begin talking with elementary students about principles of science. For example, one volume contains a mystery that centers upon static electricity (and a poor, hungry cat). In the back of the book, there is a related "shocking" activity.

I like the short projects lend themselves nicely to deeper exploration through the Project Ideas at Science Buddies. Parents interested in doing hands-on science projects with their students will find a handy list of projects that use readily-available materials in the Parents section of the Science Buddies website.

(Note: The Doyle and Fossey books are marketed for grades 3-5.)