Katharine Cashman's Reading List

"Yes, it’s clear that astronomy and space travel and planets are very popular, we had several books on these topics. We really liked this one because it’s a more narrative form of non-fiction and the author is an astrophysicist who has won awards for outreach. It’s very clear that she’s used to talking to and engaging with kids. You can tell she’s writing from an academic perspective, but also that she’s writing to answer the sorts of questions that she gets from kids. We also liked the illustrations, but the big thing was the authentic nature of the author’s voice, and that she is clearly writing for curious kids. Yes, I can really see that teachers can use that in classes in a very fun way. The age range we’re aiming at with all the books in the Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize is 8-14. But clearly, individual books will be better for certain ages. I could see this one covering quite a large age range, because parts of it are the sorts of things that little kids ask, but then there’s a lot of it that I think would be engaging to the slightly older children in that range. Yes, whereas the chapters on the night sky and why is the sky blue would be good for little kids. But I also learned a lot; when I read about astrophysics, it sort of makes my head hurt. Yes, it’s very digestible and you could read it spread out over time, although once I got started on it I just kept reading it straight through. But individual chapters don’t rely on the previous one."

"This was one of my favourites. It has stunning graphics. I first fell in love with the title. I like the fact that it had activities, the DIY pages in the mix. I could really see teachers or parents using this, because although they’re very simple things to do they definitely looked like fun activities. And I liked that it was put in a context by having the different sections: all about plants (the parts of the plant and photosynthesis); the world of plants, about adaptation and evolution; from breakfast until bedtime, about all the ways that plants are involved in your everyday life; and the power plants. I like that span from the very fundamental information about plants, all the way through to things that you don’t think about, how we use plants and how plants can help us."

"I actually love the fact that we got some novels. That’s a new trend. I know that in last year’s Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize there was a novel in the top six, that was also about a girl doing coding. I gave that one to a 12-year-old friend of mine, who was just starting a coding class in school. Her mother said that she read it in one sitting, she was just really excited. I liked it because I think that storytelling is a very human way of communicating. It can be a really effective way to engage the reader in science. Storytelling is something that I think we as scientists haven’t used to the extent that we could. I don’t know about you, but there was that little secret message in Morse code at the beginning of each chapter. I was actually decoding it as I went along, reminding me of my Morse code. The protagonist is a girl and is Asian, non-white, so the book also provides an interesting role model without it being obvious. Yes. And I love the fact that a lot of it is very here and now but it’s also a little bit futuristic. So it spans that range nicely; I’ve never been a big sci-fi person but the slightly futuristic is nice. Definitely critical thinking, and also about algorithms and debugging and all these very fundamental computing skills."

"I didn’t know it was four times! There were numerous books on role models; what I loved about this one was that although there are kids’ books about inventions, there aren’t many about inventors. Most books about role models are about scientists. We all liked this one because it was a little bit different in flavour. It also just spans such a wide range of types of inventions and types of inventors over time and over different cultures that, again, it provides diverse role models implicitly rather than explicitly. Yes, they could be a 13 year old Maasai in Kenya. I was particularly taken with it when I got to the Lizzie Magie story. Shortly before I read this book, I’d read a much longer article on her, which was the first I knew about this woman who was incredible. She was a feminist. She was interested in economics, which is why she developed what she called The Landlord’s Game. She invented all sorts of other things. She actually had patents on them. Then the Monopoly game base was stolen from her without any credit. I’ve been fascinated by the story and then I got to Inventors and found that Lizzie Magie is in it! I read an amazing book several years ago, it’s called Fortune Is a River , about da Vinci. He was working also for military purposes. At that time, Florence was battling with Pisa. He was working for Machiavelli who had decided that one way to lay siege to Pisa would be to divert the Arno River out to the sea before it got to Pisa. Da Vinci actually knew enough hydrology that he constructed a workable plan to do that, it’s just that the people trying to carry out the plan didn’t follow the directions. Well, not just children. Here at Bristol, I have several friends who are artists. In fact, we have a programme in our department that we call EarthArt . We try to bring a couple of artists in every year and connect them with scientists who they want to interact with. We also have a small gallery where they exhibit their work. It’s a very low budget thing, but the artists are very eager to talk to scientists. And what I’ve noticed is when the scientists start working with artists, the scientists recognise that the artists provide a different perspective. So it’s a good cross-fertilisation. So I would say definitely, yes, that there’s really a growing appreciation for cross-disciplinary approaches. Personally, I’m a very visual person and I’ve found that I can communicate very well with artists because in art there’s a lot of experimentation, there is a lot of problem solving. Artists have an idea of what they want to do, but a lot of it is very technical. So I see a lot of similarities between art and science."

"My very favourite of the books. In fact, I liked it so much that I bought fifteen copies and I’ve been giving them out to everyone. Yes, but I wasn’t the only one who loved this book. I think everyone was intrigued by it, because it’s so interactive. It’s a true and very creative art and science fusion. The artist describes herself as a designer and artist who uses data as a creative material. The author is a data journalist and researcher who explores novel ways of communicating data. So this book was interesting to me because even at the introductory university level, and certainly at high school level, many science books are written as what a friend of mine calls dictionaries with pictures—just definitions. What I loved about this is that it has a lot of very quirky fun facts, but they’re presented in a way that you engage with the book, you actually bounce it on your head or drop it on the floor. Another page that a friend of mine loves is where they show the different animal eyes, and that the eyes are scaled to actual size. The book also has an appendix in the back, which is where all the data sources are. The small print pages have sources, encouraging you if you want to go find out more. I loved the way everything is scaled properly, all of the different tongues, the size of your tongue versus that of a butterfly. Also, I like the fact that things are in different orientations so that you physically have to turn the book upside down or turn it on its side. It’s unusually interactive. Yes it’s simple, but very effective."