Good Science Books for Kids

The proprietor of Good Mom, Bad Mom emails to point out a post spinning off Monday's Goldilocks post. A good thing she did, as Technorati has collapsed into utter uselessness, at least for finding people who link to my posts.

Her post quotes an unnamed correspondent, who writes:

My two daughters are both compulsive readers, gobbling up everything in their path. As a result, they both have very large vocabularies are very well informed about a range of things. I love it--instead of watching TV and getting dumb, they're reading, and getting smart. Mostly they read novels, but it's amazing how much about the real world you can learn from reading fiction.

One thing I'm sorry about is that they don't seem to be assimilating any basic science literacy from their reading. So my question for you, or maybe for your blog readers, is can you recommend any books that kids will love that contain science or math? They could be fiction or nonfiction, but if nonfiction, they have to be fun to read -- not too rinkydink on the one hand, nor too dry on the other. They don't have to be great literature, just fun for 10-16 year-olds to read. I want to tap in that ability (and willingness) they have to effortlessly vacuum up knowledge. It would be cool if they knew as much about geology as they know about English folklore of magical creatures.

When it comes to non-fiction, I can't think of anything immediately, but I know of a good physics book that's due out this Christmas...

In fiction, there are a lot of good possibilities, as long as you don't mind genre cooties. The YA end of SF is full of books in which the characters succeed by being smart and figuring things out, and really, that's the essence of science.

If you'd like one specific book, I'd suggest Peeps by Scott Westerfeld, which alternates between chapters about the adventures of a teenage vampire hunter, and chapters describing real-world parasites in some detail. All of the parasite stuff turns out to be relevant in the end, and along the way you get both a kick-ass adventure story and a lot of gross facts about biology.

Steven Gould also has several books-- Jumper, Wildside, Helm in which teenage protagonists find themselves in unusual situations, and make their way to success by thinking calmly and rationally about their situation and how to turn it to their advantage. They're all built around particular skills, but the basic pattern is the same.

For that matter, the Lemony Snicket books work because the Baudelaire orphans are the only rational people in their whole silly world. They get into scrapes because the adults around them are too daft to see what's going on, and they get themselves out by learning about what they're facing, and inventing a solution.

Skewing political, there's also Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, which includes a lot of information about tricks to subvert authority. It's a book sure to be hated by many a school principal, but it's very definitely got a scientific slant.

I could keep going, but I really need to get to work. If you think of one of the many obvious books I'm forgetting, leave a note in the comments.

More like this

New Scientist's Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? and Does Anything Eat Wasps?.

Francesca Gould's Why You Shouldn't Eat Your Boogers.

John Grant's Discarded Science.

Anything by Mary Roach.

Perhaps the Encyclopedia Brown books? I was fond of them when I was ~10. They might not be so interesting for 16 year olds, though.

I know we're looking for novels here, but there's an out-of-print non-fiction book, Comparisons, by the Diagram Group, which is an absolutely fascinating examination of the magnitudes of all sorts of physical quantities.

I think I was about 16ish when I read "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" which doesn't perhaps provide much direct science literacy, but it can peak your interest in a subject. I read a series on female scienctists as "tween" that were quite old 25 years ago and as I discovered later heavily fictionalized, but there are likely newer versions of that kind of thing with greater attention to truth.

Anything in Larry Gonick's Cartoon Guide to . . . series. I have the Guides to Physics, Chemistry, and Statistics; and most of the History books. They get picked-up and re-read frequently. They might be too deep even for a well-read 10-year-old, but the pictures are pretty easy to look at. The target audience is adults, so a well-read 16-year-old should handle them well.

Maybe John Allen Paulos's A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (short, 2-3 page applications of mathematical reasoning to things commonly found in the news).

I liked Encyclopedia Brown, too. Might be a little dated, though. Is there a modern magazine equivalent to National Geographic World?

I don't know if they are suited for 10 year olds, but for 16 year olds, I'd recommend the "science of discworld" series by Terry Pratchett and, uhm... (let me lokk up the names of the other two authors) Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, where the wizards of discworld accidentially create our universe and then fiddle with it. Book one is about earths history, the second about the power stories have over humans and the third book is about evolution.
The books switch between a discworld story and the "real world" explanation. The discworld stories are hilarious, and the science part is also quite well written imo. (Although I don't agree with everything)

By maschinenbaeuerin (not verified) on 07 May 2009 #permalink