STEM and AI Start with a Story: Nurturing Curiosity Through Books
August 28, 2025
Estimated read time: ~5-6 min
Raising kids in the era of AI brings a new wave of ideas—both exciting and unsettling.
As a true scientist at heart, I often turn to reading to help calm (or sometimes excite) my restless mind. This summer, my family and I have uncovered some unexpected reads in our hunt to find books to address the barrage of toddler questions hurled our way every day.
Among my favorites are these 5 picks that stir curiosity and innovation in surprising ways. These 5 books make clever use of one or more of 3 simple themes to make big concepts easier to digest for young audiences: learning how to think, finding sources of inspiration, and turning complex ideas into relatable stories.
Think:
Arguably one of the most important cornerstones of STEM education is admitting when you don’t know something, and learning how to pose questions. Where better to start than with “What do you do with an idea?” Written by Kobi Yamada, Illustrated by Mae Besom. This book demonstrates the power of thinking deeply, staying true to yourself and the beauty of nurturing a thought. What if you learn to trust the process, and the outcome becomes bigger and better than you imagined?
These questions are what often lead to breakthrough ideas. But in the evolution of an idea, how do you start to take action, especially when perspectives differ? This concept is beautifully explored through whimsical illustrations and an adventure in “The Antlered Ship”, by Dashka Slater, Illustrated by the Fan Brothers. (hint: any book mentioning pirates is always a big hit in our household!) A gentle introduction to learning empathy and valuing diversity of thought.
Inspire (from the past):
Another emerging theme that has been enormously popular with my kids is history. Living in the Philadelphia area, we have our share of historical sites, museums and experts to learn from. This summer, we’ve had fun reading “Ben Franklin and the Magic Squares”, by Frank Murphy, Ilustrated by Richard Walz. This book playfully explores Benjamin Franklin’s many inventions—some useful, some just amusing—and wraps up with the clever puzzle of his magic squares. At its core, the story reveals Franklin’s motivation to solve problems. And the more problems he solved with his inventions, the more inspired and creative he became.
The DK/Smithsonian’s “Inventions: a visual encyclopedia” has been a fun, interactive way to answer questions about the history of how things were made, when were inventions such as rockets or robots first created, and countless kid curiosities that often come up during play - like how does a catapult differ from a cannon? And where does energy come from? This book is easy to read and simply designed. We liked that it uses photographs or accurately represented illustrations instead of cartoons found in some children’s encyclopedias. Highly recommended by my kindergartener.
Relate:
Over the summer, my kids have enjoyed attending several readings of my new book, “Decode AI”. They have fun relating to the examples in the book and experienced firsthand how storytelling can transform abstract concepts, such as machine learning, into relatable ideas, like a gnome classifying mushrooms by different patterns and colors. Sorting turtles by the color pattern of their shells or programming a robot to bake a cupcake were two favorite examples shared during a recent preschool circle time discussion.
As we transition to the start of a new school year, I am focused on creating new content to help educators ignite discussions around STEM, and invite asking more questions about AI. Building out the Idea Garden is a first step to create a platform where I can share from my experiences as a scientist, Mom, AI literacy advocate and newly penned children’s book author. Stay tuned for more book and activity recommendations, useful tips on AI, free resources and upcoming in-person events!
🌱 Developmental Skills Explored:
· Critical thinking
· Computational thinking
· Empathy
· Innovation
· Problem solving
· Storytelling
· Learning from the past
· AI literacy
Pro tip: Transparency is a key pillar to promoting good/ethical AI practice. Did you know that many scientific journals & conferences are requesting an AI or LLM (large language model) usage statement in research submissions?
Here’s mine for this post 😉:
Article text: written by LB
LLM usage: for text style revisions, layout suggestions
Images: real photo, credit: LB
Blog banner & Discover.Decode.Grow illustrations: ChatGPT, DALLE
