On Today’s podcast — exploring science in children’s literature. Science is everywhere, in everything we do, see, and read. All books offer possibilities for talk about science in the illustrations and the texts… once you know how to look for them. Children’s literature is a natural avenue to explore the seven crosscutting concepts described in the Next Generation Science Standards. In their new book: Sharing Books, Talking Science, authors Valerie Bang-Jensen and Mark Lubkowitz help teachers develop the mindset necessary to think like a scientist, and then help students think, talk, and read like scientists. We started our conversation on how the idea for this book came to be and what they call “the surprisingly powerful friendship of children's literature and science.” 





Mark:    This started in, I think it was about our fourth year at Saint Michael's College. I'm in the biology department, and Valerie is in the education department. She was at the time teaching a graduate class-

Valerie:    In nonfiction, for elementary teachers. 

Mark:    Valerie asked me if I would be a guest speaker in her class. And being a professional profession I said, "What do I need to prepare to come to your class?" And she, "Don't do anything. Just be the scientist that you are."

Valerie:    What I really said was, "Bring your science brain." The reason I did that, I had read about this idea somewhere else, and it made a lot of sense to me. My elementary teacher students, were really used to sharing books with children and talking about fiction elements. This story, the plot, the illustrations, and the connection with the text, they were fabulous about that. 
    But I wanted them to see that every reader brings a certain lens to a reading experience. The best way to do that was to invite Mark to bring in his science brain. 

Mark:    You read Winter Barn to the class. 

Valerie:    I did. I asked them, "What did you think? Talk about the book?" They noticed the pen and ink drawings, very spare, very quiet, very winter mood. The text matched that, very poetic. I turned to Mark and I said, "Mark, what did you see?"

Mark:    And I said, "It's clearly a horror story." Very simply because there are predators and there are prey in the barn living together. Not everyone is going to be happy or even alive at the end of the winter. Some of the characters will be in somebody's belly, and digested, and used as an energy source. 

Brett:    How did the students react when you shared those observations?

Valerie:    Part of it was they started to recognize that they could have gone there, maybe not as far as Mark did, in terms of seeing a system, and energy, and stability, and all of that technical terms. But they started to see that, "Oh yes, all those things were present." They just needed a way in to seeing those elements. 

Mark:    It also empathized that they way that you're trained professionally, really does influence how you see the world. It would be hard for me not to see that story in that context. That's my first glance, and I have to constantly change to a different lens when I read a story like that. 

Valerie:    Can I tell you, I will never be the same after writing this book with Mark.