20 Titles for Young STEM Enthusiasts – Summer Reading 2020
I’ve been mulling around the idea of creating summer reading lists this year. It’s been slow going as so much of my energy is put into figuring out how to run a library during a global pandemic! But, I didn’t want to re-create the wheel offering “Summer Reading for 5th Graders” either. Those types of lists can be found all over the Internet! And although they’re super helpful for parents looking for a great starting point for summer reading plans, I wanted to go a different route.
This year, I decided to focus on creating lists around different interests – sports, the arts, gaming, etc. Each list will include 20 books and will be all ages from board books to young adult titles. The lists will also include various formats and hopefully both fiction and nonfiction titles.
Today is the last list that I plan on creating for summer reading – STEM books. This list was difficult because it can go in so many directions. Like many other lists, it cannot begin to encapsulate all the amazing books that have a STEM focus from biographies to nonfiction titles, to fiction titles that incorporate STEM into the theme. Here are just a few of the STEM titles available!
20 Titles for Young STEM Enthusiasts
- An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
- Ada Twist, Scientist by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts
- Ashfall by Mike Mullin
- Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin
- The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Young Readers Edition by William Kamkwamba with Bryan Mealer
- 11 Experiments That Failed by Jenny Offill and Nancy Carpenter
- The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly
- Felix Yz by Lisa Bunker
- Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
- Fuzzy Mud by Louis Sachar
- Girling Up: How to Be Strong, Smart and Spectacular by Mayim Bialik
- Mistakes That Worked: 40 Familiar Inventions & How They Came to Be by Charlotte Foltz Jones, illustrated by John O’Brien
- The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires
- The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
- Nick and Tesla’s High-Voltage Danger Lab: A Mystery with Electromagnets, Burglar Alarms, and Other Gadgets You Can Build Yourself by Bob Pflugfelder and Steve Hockensmith
- Perfect Square by Michael Hall
- See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng
- Shark Lady: The True Story of How Eugenie Clark Became the Ocean’s Most Fearless Scientist by Jess Keating, illustrated by Marta Álvarez Miguéns
- Temple Grandin: How the Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World by Sy Montgomery
- What Do You Do with an Idea? by Kobi Yamada, illustrated by Mae Besom
More Resources
I also pulled together a list of the best STEM books of 2020, so take a look at them if you need even more suggestions! Or, check out the 10 Read Aloud STEM books by Teach Outside the Box.
Check back every day this week for a new summer reading list:
