STEAM Stories: The Backyard Build (Engineering)

I have heard of STEM but not STEAM so this book caught my eye. STEAM includes Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. As an educator, I am thrilled to see art added to this area of study. The Backyard Build (Engineering) by Jonathan Litton does just that in the beginning with Miss Gizmo’s birdbath. However, the focus of the story is on designing outside play ground equipment by Max and Suzy. The designs were easy and common ones that preschoolers would understand and be familiar with using. Though my granddaughter, who is four, had never been on a seesaw so that was new for her. The illustrations helped her to understand how it worked.

There are several things about this book I liked besides the STEAM concept. I like that the engineering designs were simple for a preschooler to understand that science is behind all those things that they play and use. I especially like the activities at the end of the book. While we did not do one of them, we read them, talked about them, thinking about what could be done in the future. For my second grade grandson, he could easily read the text but found the designs to be not too interesting. More complex engineering designs would perhaps be needed to capture and hold the attention of a school age child. With that in mind, this is a book that could be used in a preschool classroom or for an individual preschool age child.

The publisher through Net Galley provided a digital ARC. I have voluntarily decided to read and review, giving my personal opinions and thoughts.

This is the second book that I have read in this Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math (STEAM) series. In this one, two children build a playground in their backyard. They construct a swing, seesaw and slide. Elementary engineering information is introduced along the way and there are additional resources at the back of the book. This entry is clever. It may encourage children to build and to see that engineering plays a role in every day life. All in all, this is a good entry in a good series.

Thanks to NetGalley and Quarto. The opinions are mine.

Interesting and entertaining for kids and parents. Great illustrations and information. Recommend reading it with kids.

I love the idea of his book, and I might make my son read it, despite that it’s a little too simple to be truly practical for him, being 9. The story is very straight forward, Suzy and Max are bored and have nothing to play with. They enlist the help of their very craftsy neighbor, Miss Gizmo, to make some playground equipment for their yard. She helps them plan, find materials and build a swing, a slide and a seesaw. After the story there’s a section, which is almost like a classroom module with questions regarding comprehension of the story and then “your turn” questions about how the child reading would accomplish something similar. This is the part that is really useful, but I’m not sure the way it’s presented would really work well. It would be too advanced for younger kids and the story is too little kid-ish for my son. It might give home some good ideas though, a good spring board from which to begin. He has a large yard with lots of spare materials just lying around for the first time in his life, but has been a bit at a loss. Recently he decided to build a fort, but the planning phase was lacking a bit. I’m sure this will help get him organized to realize his vision.

Just a side note: It was quite hard to read this eARC as a Kindle/ mobi file. The text was all wonky here and there all over the page and some of the pictures were broken into 2 or 4 parts and impossible to parse. I do home that the ebook, if there’s to be one, is properly formatted. I wish I’d gotten the book in a PDF or other format.