Book Reviews STEM

Maple may be tiny, but her questions are enormous. Inside a lively science lab, Maple the Mouse explores experiments, inventions, magnets, growing plants, weather, light, and other early science ideas. Each discovery turns the lab into a place of wonder, where asking “why” and “how” is part of the fun. This illustrated introduction to science is designed for young readers who are beginning to notice how the world works. The story keeps concepts simple and inviting, using Maple’s curiosity to make science feel active, friendly, and creative. Children who like animals, experiments, and hands-on discovery will find a cheerful guide in Maple as she explores, tests, observes, and learns.

Sunlight is everywhere, but Lila is ready to see it in a new way. In this gentle educational story, Lila learns about solar power and begins to understand how the sun can help people make cleaner energy. The book introduces young readers to a real-world science topic through warm storytelling rather than heavy explanation, making solar energy feel approachable for early elementary children. With its focus on curiosity, the environment, and simple science, this book is a good choice for readers who ask how things work and why caring for the planet matters. Lila’s learning journey gives children a friendly first step into renewable energy, showing that big ideas can begin with one bright question.

Ever since she was a young girl, Mattie has looked at the world differently. Armed with a sketchbook full of ideas and her father's heavy toolbox, she can build almost anything her mind imagines. By the time she is twelve, she designs a brilliant safety device to protect factory workers from dangerous machinery. As she grows up, Mattie's inventive mind never stops working. She eventually creates a complex machine designed to fold the square-bottom paper bags that people still use every single day. But when a dishonest man tries to steal her brilliant idea in court, claiming a woman could never understand such mechanics, Mattie must fight to prove him wrong. Follow the inspiring journey of 'the Lady Edison' as she defends her hard work and claims her rightful place in history. This empowering true story celebrates creativity, resilience, and the brilliant mind of one of America's greatest inventors.

Meet the incredible machines that can work, think, talk, dance, and even play. Did you know that there are robots built so incredibly small that they can actually swim right inside your bloodstream? Or that some heavy-duty robots are designed to travel deep into the fiery, boiling insides of active volcanoes where humans could never survive? Discover the wild variety of shapes, sizes, and bright colors that modern robots come in, and explore the mind-blowing tasks they are programmed to complete. You will ignite your scientific curiosity with fascinating facts and hands-on activities that you can try immediately. By simply thinking about the exact steps required to build your favorite sandwich, you will soon realize that you are thinking exactly like a professional robot programmer. Packed with intriguing information and great photos, this book helps you grasp the big scientific ideas that are completely changing the way we see the world.

Discover the incredible programming that teaches computers how to be brainy. Did you know that you can actually teach a robot to play a game of soccer? Or that you could one day ride to school in a car entirely driven by a machine? Artificial intelligence is changing the way we live, and it is all about teaching computers to learn, grow, and make decisions on their own. Find out exactly how artificial intelligence identifies objects by recognizing cool differences and similarities. You will ignite your scientific mind with fun facts, hands-on activities, and amazing experiments that you can try right at home. Soon you will be spotting patterns and thinking exactly like an advanced computer program. Packed with intriguing information and great photos, this book helps beginning engineers grasp the big ideas behind the technology that is shaping our future.

A girl once expected to spend her life doing chores looks up and finds a sky full of possibility. Caroline Herschel grew up in a time when girls were not usually encouraged to study science. But with curiosity, music, math, and a fierce love of learning, she found her way from a difficult household into the world of telescopes, stars, and comets. This picture book biography tells Caroline’s true story with a Cinderella-like shape, but the real magic is her own intelligence and persistence. Young readers who love space, science, and stories about women who changed history will discover how Caroline became the first professional woman astronomer and helped expand what people knew about the night sky.

Did you know that many animals roaming the Earth have actual superpowers? It is true! In the wild, animals use incredible physical traits and unique behaviors, known as adaptations, to survive in their environments. You will meet expert escape artists who can vanish in the blink of an eye, and fascinating creatures that capture their prey using electricity or even carefully blown bubbles. This engaging science book introduces you to the curious creatures that use their natural superpowers every single day. Explore how these amazing adaptations work and learn the clever ways animals protect themselves, find food, and thrive in nature. Get ready to discover the most astonishing animal abilities and see the natural world in a completely new way.

Your ultimate goal for the fourth grade is simple: you must be the greatest scientist to ever walk the halls. You are well on your way when your rival scientist friend begs you to help her earn a scout badge by cultivating the exact mold that produces penicillin. Being a brilliant expert on all things gross and slimy, you are thrilled to tackle the challenge. But your focus gets completely derailed when your best friend decides to run for class president and demands that you serve as his top campaign manager. If juggling politics and penicillin is not hard enough, you are suddenly stuck with a bizarre new babysitter who acts suspiciously like a teenage alien from the Planet Pink. When she accidentally throws away your prized dried worm collection, your scientific timeline is thrown into total chaos. You will have to use serious problem-solving skills to win the election, survive the alien babysitter, and master the mold.

You consider yourself the ultimate scientific genius of the fourth grade. You are an absolute expert on studying mold, and you can scientifically prove that you are allergic to girls, telephone calls, and the color purple. The one thing you absolutely do not have is a best friend. Unfortunately, your teacher just paired you up for the massive school science fair with the one kid you actively consider your un-best friend. To make matters a million times worse, this kid wants to base your entire project on dinosaurs, which is incredibly embarrassing and completely third-grade behavior. As you try to figure out how to survive the project without ruining your scientific reputation, you realize the rest of the school hates your new partner just as much as you do. Putting on your detective hat, you decide to investigate exactly why your un-best friend is so unpopular, all while trying to build the perfect erupting volcano.

To be the absolute best scientist in the entire fourth grade, you need to set your sights on something massive: outer space. You desperately want to go to Space Camp to simulate a real mission to Mars, but the camp is incredibly expensive and you have to earn the money yourself. Your brilliant plan is to become a dog walker, which pairs you up with a gigantic, hyperactive Yellow Lab named Lemon Drop. Surviving a walk with this massive dog is hard enough, but dealing with his endless amounts of drool is a whole different challenge. With the help of your best friends, you realize that Lemon Drop's messy slobber is actually the perfect ingredient for a brand-new, highly unusual science experiment. You will have to use all your genius logic to manage the dog, run the tests, and secure your ticket to the stars.

You might be the most brilliant scientist in your elementary school, but cooking family dinner is a chemistry experiment you never signed up for. A pinch of this and a dash of that just does not seem very scientific. But you need to figure out recipes quickly, because there is a ten thousand dollar prize on the line for a major bake-off. To make your life even more complicated, the toughest bully in school has developed an obsession with your homemade brownies. If you cannot supply him with a fresh batch every morning, you are going to get clobbered. With the help of your best friends, you begin to realize that the kitchen is just another kind of laboratory. You will have to keep your cool and measure your ingredients perfectly to win the prize and keep the school bully happy at the same time.

Have you ever wondered why rivers and streams are so important to life on Earth? Without them, humans, plants, and animals would not have the food, water, and power we need to survive. In this exciting science book, you will explore how rivers change the shape of the land and how we, in turn, change the shape of our waterways. Get ready to roll up your sleeves and become a scientist. You will find twenty-five hands-on projects that let you test real science concepts right at home. You can investigate a local watershed, look for tiny life forms in water samples, model how insects walk on water, and even build your own water wheel. Along the way, you will discover fascinating facts about how waterways connect to human history and the ecosystem. You will also learn about climate change and how it affects our rivers. It is up to us to think creatively and find ways to keep our streams healthy. With fun facts, cool illustrations, and exciting experiments, this book gives you everything you need to understand one of our planet's most vital resources.