The desire to invent, innovate, tinker, make and build is not something limited to boys or girls, but that has not always been the case. This picture book story, based on the life of Margaret E. Knight, a female inventor and holder of one of the first patents issued to a woman in the U.S., paints a wonderful picture of a female engineer.

What do you know about the history of paper bags? Maybe not so much. Have you ever thought about how bags are mass-produced? About how a machine spits out zillions of bags over time? About the fact that before there was a machine, there was someone with a pencil, some paper, and an idea for that machine?

In the case of paper bags, the "box"-bottomed bags familiar to us are the result of engineers improving upon paper bags that had to be held open to be filled. Bags that stand open are much easier to use, and the story of the race to develop a machine to mass-produce those bags intersects with the story of a female inventor and engineer, the story of Margaret E. Knight.

Growing Up During the Industrial Revolution

I had never heard of Margaret E. Knight when I first picked up Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight Became an Inventor, and at first glance, with its soft, almost vintage watercolor illustration, I wasn't sure this book would make my list. You know what they say about judging a book by its cover. I was very, very wrong and am very, very glad I have now read this book, know the story of Margaret E. Knight, and have added another wonderful title to my virtual shelf of "women in science" books for girls.

This is a fantastic picture book for introducing girls to the world of engineering and to a fairly obscure woman in science history. Written and beautifully illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully, the book does an excellent job weaving documented biographical details into an illuminating and inspiring story of a female inventor in the mid-20th century.

Born in 1938, Margaret was, according to McCully's story, an inventor from an early age. She lives with her mother and two brothers, and though the family is poor, "Mattie didn't feel poor. She had her father's toolbox."

Her father's toolbox.

With this introduction, the stones are cast. The author immediately signals that this is not a typical story of a typical girl from the mid-1900s. This is the story, from page one, of a girl who keeps a notebook of her ideas and sketches—her inventions. This is the story of a girl who uses her engineering mind to devise all kinds of wonderful solutions for her family, including toys for her brothers, an admirable kite, and a sled that is so successful on the winter hills and so popular with neighborhood kids that she makes and sells them for a quarter each.

The Engineering Design Process in Action

Mattie's life is not easy. When Mattie is twelve, she goes to work in the mills in New York. She works long and hard factory days, and yet the story focuses not on her hardship but instead on Mattie's perseverance, her optimism, and her persistent interest in machinery, engineering, and innovation.

An accident one day in the mill injures a worker. Faced with a problem (a shuttle flew off of a machine and hit someone in the head), Mattie thinks through the way the machine is supposed to work, what happened, and why. By approaching the problem analytically, she resolves to find a solution, something that could be used as a safety device to keep shuttles from flying off of looms when a thread breaks. And she succeeds. "A machine was an invention and could always be improved," the story tells readers.

McCully's attention to details supporting Mattie as an engineer are evident throughout the book and do a wonderful job highlighting steps of the engineering design process. A successful invention often involves numerous prototypes and lots of trial and error. When Mattie's kite is mentioned, readers are told that Mattie first sketched out various designs, picked the one she thought would work best, and made it. The emphasis on the iterative cycle of engineering design appears again and again throughout the story as Mattie works on a design, tests it, troubleshoots, and builds again. Readers see this same process again later when Mattie is developing her paper bag machine.

At eighteen, Mattie leaves home to work in other factories. She ends up working in a factory that makes paper bags, an early version. The race was on, however, for the development of an improved method. The story that unfolds is a story of an engineering design process that took many years, a great deal of ingenuity, and even more perseverance as Mattie fights to defend her design and claim to a patent in court.

One to Share and Talk About

Margaret Knight received more than twenty patents and developed many more original inventions. Posthumously, she was inducted into the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame. McCully's story fills in and fleshes out the story of this woman in science history, giving new life and color to someone who might otherwise remain largely overlooked.

That Mattie's design sketchbooks play a big part in her story is a reminder to young engineers about the value of record keeping and the role and importance of keeping a design notebook. McCully's watercolor illustrations are beautifully balanced, throughout the book, with sketchbook engineering designs. As a supplement to the book, readers and families can look online at some of the sketches from Margaret's patents.

Mattie's story is one to read with all of your children—girls and boys alike. The story of a girl and then woman who was an engineer during when many people didn't believe women could be engineers is important. We live in a different world today, but kids need to know, at all ages, that a toolbox can be a treasure trove of inspiration and invention for both boys and girls.

Machines are still machines, and they can always be improved upon.

More Science and Engineering for Girls

If you are looking for another excellent book on girls and engineering, be sure and take a look at Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women. See oiur blog coverage of it in the "Encouraging and Inspiring Female Student Engineers" post.

See also: "Sparking Interest in Science and Science History for the Read Aloud Crowd."

Boost your summer break with hands-on science the whole family can enjoy. From activities you can do with the kids in an afternoon, to projects you can set up as challenges for the kids to work on throughout the summer, summer science can help keep the summer doldrums—and summer brain drain—at bay.

With its medley of lazy mornings, pool parties, crickets, and lemonade, summer break is here again. The hallmarks of summer break differ for every family, a recipe that gets tweaked year to year, a bit more or less of this, a splash of that, and a twist here and there. But one thing stays true for many of us—summer break means school is out for the summer.

Finding a balance of activities to keep students occupied during long summer days can be a challenge, but the summer break may also be a treasure trove of opportunity. Without school deadlines, school exams, and the trudge to and from school each day, students have more time to spend on areas of personal interest—and time to explore, pursue, and be exposed to potential new areas of interest as well. Of course, there is also plenty of time for the things they already love, whether that means shooting hoops at the corner park, playing video games, or perfecting skateboarding tricks.

It's all a matter of balance. But if left to their own devices (figuratively and literally), summer can be a slippery slope. You might look back and few months from now and see that the break melted away in a blur of screen time—a blur that brings with it the risk of brain drain, a measurable loss of academic learning, especially in areas of math and literacy.

Encouraging Summer Science

The good news is that finding ways to nudge, encourage, and empower them to do projects and activities that are both fun and enriching is easier than you might think. Giving a dash of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) to some of your summer plans is a great way to occupy the kids with learning experiences and challenges that you can all feel good about. Plus, you might spark long-lasting interest that will carry them into the next school year—and maybe beyond!

The following posts are full of ideas for summer science activities and projects that make great choices for summer science, for the kids or for the whole family:

With a bit of planning, you can stock up on materials your students can use to create a cadre of cool robotic animals, bugs, and creatures this summer. Upcycled vibrating motors may be your best friend for inspiring hands-on engineering with your kids, but there are plenty of ways to turn off-the-shelf bots and the Mindstorms® kit you may already own into a foundation for fun summer science with a friendly "critter" twist.

With school out, there are even more free hours in the day for young engineers to tinker, to make, to wonder with their hands, and to innovate. Robotics enthusiasm has been brewing in my house in recent weeks, a hybridization of interest in RC helicopters, recycled art, Iron Man, and robots in general. We have always had an undercurrent of robotics interest, but recently I have watched the youngest sit at the computer and pull up videos of various kinds of robot projects, sifting through what's out there and synthesizing what he is seeing into a better grasp of what is possible. At nine, he's got big ideas!

Planning Summer Science

As I iron out plans for hands-on summer science activities and projects to both engage and occupy my kids during long summer days, I have been watching the stream of new and exciting Project Ideas being added to the Science Buddies robotics area. Bristlebots are a must-make for us this summer. It's a logical starting point, and it turns the familiar hex- and nano-bug concept we already know into a DIY activity. We can make them.

Jumping in with Bristlebots

Bristlebots are a great way to start kids off on a simple robotics engineering project—one you can pretty much guarantee will succeed. There is minimal wiring, a minimal number of parts, and for parents who worry about not having expertise to guide a robotics project, there are minimal steps where you (or the kids) might get off track. When it boils down to it, make sure you have one wire from the motor touching the top and one wire touching the bottom of the battery, and you are all set. If you decide to get industrious and salvage vibrating motors from the junk electronics drawer in your house, you up the challenge a notch (you might have to attach the wires), but the level of difficulty is still minimal—and the fun and sense of general robotics accomplishment pretty big.

Bristlebots, first introduced by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, are a great launching point. A Bristlebot doesn't take long to make, and once made and set loose on a table, these little bots will take off on their bristly legs and be bounced around and redirected by hands or makeshift habitat walls.

But once those bots are scuttling around, chances are that you—or, more to the point, your kids—are going to want more.

You can extend the life of your bristlebot exploration by experimenting with different brush heads (as our Project Idea suggests), or by constructing ramps, mazes, and tunnels. But older elementary kids will surely want to kick things up a notch. They are going to have ideas about solar panels, about adding more brushes, about giving the bot more power, and about enabling remote control. Encouraging their thinking and innovation is important, and having some additional related projects up your sleeve to satiate and encourage their curiosity and desire to tinker, build, and make may find you and your kids breezing through a robot-inspired summer.

Robot Critters

Bugs, critters, pets, pals... call them what you will, but many student robotics projects generate small bots that skitter around, much like an insect.

Some builders will prefer the nuts and bolts look of a bot, admiring the visible circuits, the tiny breadboard, or the familiar look of a LEGO® Mindstorms® creature. Others prefer to spruce things up a bit, creatively masking a bot's hardwired construction with costuming that softens the edges and makes it "cute" or "friendly" in appearance.

How you and your kids customize a robot is completely up to you. If one day your daughter really wants a bristlebot that looks like a ladybug, it's doable. The same bot can be re-dressed another day to look entirely different. What's going on beneath the costume is where most of the exciting hands-on construction happens. But customizing a bot to make it "just right for its creator" is a step that brings hands-on engineering full circle for some creative-minded kids.

Here are a few robotics projects you can adapt to do with your students this summer as hands-on science and engineering activities at home:

• Art Bot: Build a Wobbly Robot Friend That Creates Art: this bot is built from a plastic cup. Adding googly eyes to give the artist robot personality may be just the beginning! The full project has students explore how to guide the movements of the bot by adjusting the weights on top of the bot's head. For summer family fun, a basic art bot might be enough to kick start interest. (Grades K-3)
• Racing BristleBots: On Your Mark. Get Set. Go!: an introductory exploration of bristlebots, this project walks you through the basics and sets the stage for future bristle-based bot experiments. Masking the bot's toothbrush origins isn't covered in the project, but that doesn't mean you can't turn yours into something uniquely your own! (Grades K-3)
• The Frightened Grasshopper: Explore Electronics & Solar Energy with a Solar-Powered Robot Bug: this exploration uses a ready-made bot, but it gives students the opportunity to investigate solar energy—and whether or not artificial light works for solar-powered critters and devices. With what your student learns in this project, she might have ideas for taking another basic bot in a new, sun-friendly, direction. (Grades 4-5)
• Take a Hike: Train Your Robot Dog to Walk with a Virtual Leash: this project involves building a LEGO® Mindstorms® robot and programming the bot's sensors to respond to light so that you can "walk" your pet by controlling a light source, like a flashlight. If you already have the Mindstorms system, this is a great programming-based challenge for your builder. (Grades 6-8)
• Build a Light-Tracking Robot Critter: transform a regular bristlebot robot into a bot that you can guide around with a flashlight. This robot uses two toothbrush heads, two motors, and two light sensors and involves a more sophisticated circuit using a small breadboard. Bring on the tinkerers! (Grades 9-12)

The projects above are arranged in order of difficulty because when it comes to engineering, electronics, and robotics, your students will often learn in a stepwise manner, building upon skills introduced and used in one project when they move on to the next, slightly more difficult, project. All kids differ, but the general grade range for these projects are noted. Tinker-savvy kids can still enjoy the less difficult projects, and with adult involvement, younger students can certainly join in on projects pegged as appropriate for independent science fair engineering projects for older students.

Why not try them all!

Show Off Your Bots!

We would love to see the bots you and your students create this summer. Send us a photo, and we might share your bots on the blog or one of our other community spots!