Book Nerds Wanted!
Do you enjoy reading? Are you looking for a club that reads great books and discusses them through an online forum? Our STEM Book Club is the place for you! Check back to see the newest featured books. Purchase the book, or check it out of your local library! Finish the book, then join in on the fun when you share your likes and dislikes.
Mission Save the Planet
Summary:
Mission: Save the Planet is a rousing guide for all those who want to help fight global warming and lesson their impact on Earth. Based on the belief that knowledge is power, this book answers the questions: What's the problem? Why should I care? What can I do about it?
With eye-grabbing illustrations and straightforward words, this book is packed with fun facts, activities, and practical things to do to live a greener life. It offers smart and easy-to-do ideas for: Conserving energy at home, at school, and around town, Switching to clean energy to power your life, Making some noise to let others know you care and to spread the word about how to keep our planet healthy
It's your planet- Get out there and make a difference!
Recommended for ages 9-11.
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The Fourteenth Goldfish
Summary:
Eleven-year-old Ellie has never liked change. She misses fifth grade. She misses her old best friend. She even misses her dearly departed goldfish. Then one day a strange boy shows up. He's bossy. He's cranky. And weirdly, he looks a lot like Ellie's grandfather, a scientist who's always been slightly obsessed with immortality. Could this gawky teenager really be Grandpa Melvin? Has he finally found the secret to eternal youth? With a lighthearted touch and plenty of humor, New York Times bestselling, three-time Newbery Honor-winning author Jennifer Holm celebrates the wonder of science and explores fascinating questions about life and death, family and friendship, immortality...and possibility.
Recommended for grades 3-7.
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Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women
Summary:
In kitchens and living rooms, in garages and labs and basements, even in converted chicken coops, women and girls have invented ingenious innovations that have made our lives simpler and better. Their creations are some of the most enduring (the windshield wiper) and best loved (the chocolate chip cookie). What inspired these women, and just how did they turn their ideas into realities?
In-text: Thimmesh, Catherine. “Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women." Amazon.
Recommended for grades 5-7.
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Click’d
Allie Navarro can’t wait to show her best friends the app she built at CodeGirls summer camp. CLICK’D pairs users based on common interests and sends them on a fun (and occasionally rule-breaking) scavenger hunt to find each other. And it’s a hit. By the second day of school, everyone is talking about CLICK’D. Watching her app go viral is amazing. Leaderboards are filling up! Everyone’s making new friends. And with all the data Allie is collecting, she has an even better shot at beating her archenemy, Nathan, at the upcoming youth coding competition. But when Allie discovers a glitch that threatens to expose everyone’s secrets, she has to figure out how to make things right, even if that means sharing the computer lab with Nathan. Can Allie fix her app, stop it from doing any more damage, and win back the friends it hurt—all before she steps on stage to present CLICK’D to the judges? New York Times best-selling author Tamara Ireland Stone combines friendship, coding, and lots of popcorn in her fun and empowering middle-grade debut.
In-text: Stone, Tamara Ireland. “CLICK”D (Fiction – Middle Grade).” Amazon.
Recommended for grades 3-7.
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In the Land of Invisible Women
Summary: This memoir by Qanta A. Ahmed, a British Muslim doctor, begins in the late 1990s when her application to renew her U.S. visa is denied and she accepts a job in Saudi Arabia. Though excited about the prospect of forming a deeper connection to her faith, she struggles with being a feminist, a doctor, and a Western woman living and working in a country that’s deeply oppressive to women. (Grades 9–12)
In-text: Minero, Emelina. “12 Inpiring STEM Books for Girls .” Edutopia, 15 May 2017
Recommended for grades 9-12.
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3:59
Summary:
Josie Byrne and her doppelganger, Jo, live in different universes that open to each other every 12 hours, at 3:59. In this science fiction/horror story by Gretchen McNeil, Josie believes she's just dreaming this alternate world until she switches places with Jo. Josie and Jo realize that their worlds are in danger, and use physics to save them both.
In-text: Minero, Emelina. “12 Inpiring STEM Books for Girls .” Edutopia, 15 May 2017
Recommended for grades 9-12.
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Lab Girl
Disclosure: This book is recommended for 9-12 grade students. It does include some explicit language. While there may be some mature language in the reading, this book was chosen because 1) It displays a courageous woman’s life journey to become a talented scientist, and 2) Hope Jahren’s perseverance throughout all her trials and triumphs gives girls the hope that they can do anything as long as they are willing to work hard enough and follow their dreams.
Summary: Lab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren’s remarkable stories: about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classroom’s labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work done “with both the heart and the hands”; and about the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries, of scientific work.
Yet at the core of this book is the story of a relationship Jahren forged with a brilliant, wounded man named Bill, who becomes her lab partner and best friend. Their sometimes rogue adventures in science take them from the Midwest across the United States and back again, over the Atlantic to the ever-light skies of the North Pole and to tropical Hawaii, where she and her lab currently make their home.
Jahren’s probing look at plants, her astonishing tenacity of spirit, and her acute insights on nature enliven every page of this extraordinary book. Lab Girl opens your eyes to the beautiful, sophisticated mechanisms within every leaf, blade of grass, and flower petal. Here is an eloquent demonstration of what can happen when you find the stamina, passion, and sense of sacrifice needed to make a life out of what you truly love, as you discover along the way the person you were meant to be.
In-text: (Amazon.com, 2017)
Your Bibliography: Amazon.com. (2017). Cite a Website - Cite This For Me.
Recommended for grades 9-12.
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Finding Wonders: Three Girls Who Changed Science
Journey into the lives of Maria Sibylla Merian, Mary Anning, and Maria Mitchell. See how these three impressive ladies broke through the typical "girl" stereotype, and went on to discover truths about the life cycles of insects, fossils that helped uncover the past, and the discovery of a comet that soared through the night sky.
Recommended for grades 4-6.
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