The first two non-fiction kids books of the batch of about six I worked on late last year have come back from the publisher. These ones were an especially interesting challenge, being all about the “Maker Movement”, something I knew very little about, and which I had to extensively research.
The series itself encourages kids to get dirty and make things, which I think is an especially laudable goal, and the book talks a bit about the history of the field we want to get kids to be creative about, and various aspects of those fields, punctuated with Maker crafts that the kids are encouraged to try at home.
Other than that, these two books could not be more different. Finding activities about robotics was easy. Robotics is cool, and there’s a lot of kid-material material available for research. Graphic design? Not so much. What I did find online was passionate and dedicated, but I suspect they were passionate and dedicated because they were one of the only sources available, and thus they were on an important mission. That’s great, but when I’m asked to provide four separate kid-friendly resources for readers to read more about, that becomes a challenge.
I’m proud of these books, and glad to add these to my shelf. Four more to follow.