Science is lyrical: STEM Friday

February 22, 2013 by lernerbooks241 4 Comments

Science Is Real!

If you have any interest in children and science, technology, engineering, and math, you owe it yourself to buy They Might Be Giants’ “Science Is Real” album (with videos for every song). And if you hear a tune when I say “The sun is a mass of incandescent gas,” then you really must buy it because, as they say, “that thesis has been rendered invalid.”

I love the first song on the album (above) because when they sing “the facts are with science,” it’s true of course, but it’s truth wrapped in imagination and make believe and carried along by the tools of art. Making up stories is often the best way—sometimes the only way—to tell ourselves what is “true.”

“When I’m seeking knowledge, either simple or abstract, the facts are with science,” goes the song, proving that yes, the facts are with science, but their delivery depends on art

Kate Hosford and Gabi Swiatkowska’s Infinity & Me was a project born in this spirit: take a painfully abstract mathematical concept and make the facts of it resonate through the art of the picture book.

And so we were very please to learn yesterday that Infinity & Me is a finalist for the Bank Street College’s Cook Prize, honoring “the best science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) picture book published for children aged eight to ten.”

Anna Cavallo, Zach Marell—the book’s editor and designer respectively–and I are very proud of this honor for Kate and Gabi’s book. It represents a core value of our picture book program at Carolrhoda.

-Andrew Karre, editorial director of Carolrhoda Books

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