What is all this about books for kids?

As a geek of long-standing, I want to encourage all the small people in my life to get excited about math and science. Actually, I want them to be excited about anything they love, but as I love math and science, I want them to be unafraid of subjects that are sometimes imposing or scary. I want them to see a seed turn into a plant and smile in joy. To see chemicals react and gasp in amazement. To look at numbers and see beauty.

I want them to be geeks, and to see joy and amazement everywhere around them.

Pretty much everything here overlaps with another category.

Math & Science

Andrea Beaty: Rosie Revere Engineer (2013)

Ada Twist Scientist (2016)

Barbara Cooney: Miss Rumphius (1983)

The Lupine Lady lives in a small house overlooking the sea. In between the rocks around her house grow blue and purple and rose-colored flowers. The Lupine Lady is little and old. But she has not always been that way. I know. She is my great-aunt, and she told me so.

Demi: One Grain Of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale

Long ago in India, there lived a raja who believed that he was wise and fair, as a raja should be.

Deborah Heiligman: The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos (2013)

If you have read many scientific journals, then you are probably aware of Paul Erdos, the man whose name is on more scientific papers than any other person. This story talks about the boy who became that man–and also about how he ended up publishing with so many people.

Ashley Spires: The Most Magnificent Thing (2014)

Laurie Wallmark: Ada Byron Lovelace and the Thinking Machine (2015)

Any geek worth their salt knows that Ada Lovelace was the mother of computing. But if you aren’t a geek, then you may never have heard of the daughter of Lord Byron who created programming and changed the world to come.

Click through on any of the title (or book covers) to see the books on Amazon. (And if you buy, I get a few parts of pennies to build up towards a book for me!)