The monthly Sigma Xi email newsletter for April included a link to Magic World Media, a new company producing children's books about science:
Magic World Media was founded in 2008 by scientists in order to offer children a view into the mysterious ways of life and the universe through books and other forms of media. Our goal is to nurture the imagination and wonder of young children by introducing them to the world that exists beyond the limitations of our senses and, importantly, exposing them to the vastness of what is still unknown. Our books generally place the child at the center of a process of questioning and consider how the individual relates to and is influenced by the universe.
To attract a wider audience than simply those with a predisposition to science, our books are designed to look and sound like mainstream fiction so that they can be easily categorized as general human interest. It is our hope that children who read Magic World books will be inspired to learn the tools of science in their formal schooling and grow into adults who have not lost the ability to make the leaps of imagination required for revolutionary scientific advance.
Their web page indicates that they're particularly interested in books explaining "light, dark matter and dark energy, or electromagnetism" to kindergarten-age children. So, if you've got a good way to convey those ideas to young children, head over there and check them out.
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Interestingly, I recently talked to somebody who had gotten an offer to write a children's book on dark matter or dark energy. Don't know if it was from this company, but sounds very similar. We had a long discussion about this. I am very skeptic it is a good idea to teach children knowledge that isn't yet established. I mean, look, I know everybody in this community is taking dark energy and dark matter as a fact, but the actual facts that we have are observations and data and these won't make it into the children's books. We know the difference between the story and the facts, but neither the children nor their parents won't know it. Just think ahead two decades. Maybe the situation will look completely different, but then thousands of twenty-somethings will have grown up with a wrong worldview that was advocated in a book they read when they were 7 years old. I don't think scientific knowledge should go into a children's book until it's been nominated for a Nobel prize. We should be very careful what we feed into young brains.
Boys and girls, while you are pasting the cotton beards onto the pictures of Democritus, let us review.
As the ancients knew, the universe is composed of four elements. We now know that these are not Earth, Air, Water, and Fire (or, for inclusion, for our Asian-American students, Wood), but these: Matter, Dark Matter, Energy, and Dark Energy.
Now open your Biology folder to the section entitled "Humors." We know that our bodies are made of 4 humors, relating to the four elements. These are Carbohydrates, Proteins, Lipids, and Nucleic Acids.
Now let us put on our cotton beards and climb aboard the Beagle to travel across the Ocean of Ideology to the Galapagos Islands of Langerhans.
While the subjects of the books are worthy of discussion, my big complaint is no indication on the website of when they will be available, where, how much, etc.
I was further disappointed since my emails to the company bounced.
Light and electromagnetism, OK. Dark matter and dark energy seem like about the last things a kindergartener (or indeed a typical adult) needs to know about. I have a really bright first grader and he likes learning new concepts but I think that's a bit much even for him.
Bee-
While I'm probably not the target audience that these guys are going after, just the other day I found myself trying to explain dark energy to my six-year-old twins. All that I knew to tell them was that we could see the effects of a lot of mass in the universe but we didn't have a way of seeing it directly. (They could get gravitational lensing because we've covered a bunch of relativity already -- "Make me more massive!" they call when the light turns green) These books may not do it, but there are certainly ways to differentiate to young learners what we know and what we think that information means.
While not quite for kindergarteners, (the target age was 6-12), a good introduction to physics is to be found in the old TVOntario program Eureka!
The full run is on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=805340150FF8C83F
Thank you for our post on our company! We are happy to see all the comments and would like to respond to some of them. Our goal is not to provide children with a whole lot of fact and theory but rather to introduce them to the idea that science is a quest to unlock the mysteries of life and the universe, an exploration of what we donât know rather than a study of fact. We are therefore particularly interested in publishing books that raise unanswered questions at the frontiers of science and provide a framework for exploration that captivates a childâs imagination rather than ones that provide an explanation of the details of what is known. For example, in a book on dark matter, our goal would be for a child to recognize that there is something big out there that we donât understand and canât see. If we canât see it, how can we know it really exists? And how can we figure out what it might be? If the book inspires a child to look out at the sky and wonder about these questions, in our view, it has been wildly successful.
To Donna B, our apologies that your emails bounced! We are new and working through initial hiccups. Our books will be available to the trade starting May 1 and in bookstore Oct 1. Detailed ordering info will be available on our site May 1 at which time we will also have previews of the books online. Thanks for your interest.
Editor
Magic World Media