We STEAM stories!
On the cold day of February 10th, a couple of our very own StorySTEAM writers and illustrators huddled together at Vivi’s on Thayer Street for the second time of the semester. Our project is a continuation from last Fall, where we came together with the shared goal of steam-ing informative and creative picture books in STEM-related disciplines, for children of younger ages to read and enjoy.
Currently, six stories in topics ranging from Gravity and Math, to Immunology and Neuroscience are being worked on by our StorySTEAM writer-illustrator pairs. “It’s important to help spark interest in STEM for children, by making it relatable and understandable.” (David Lu, Brown ’20) Each week, we commit to one productive hour at Vivi’s, for good bubble tea and collective output.
“Taking an hour or so to write a story over the weekends is a great way to take a breather and still contribute to something meaningful and fun! Accessible scientific communication is super important to me, and the project as a whole also lets me be creative while meshing my love for Biology with my interests in writing. It can be tough tryig to figure out how to make information accessible to children while still preserving the scientific facts, but I’ve had a great time working ideas out with other members of the group.” (Jane Chen, Brown ‘20)
One of the stories we are working on is a children’s book for Topology. Topology is a central study in mathematics that does not regard ‘size’ or ‘corners’ et cetera. As much as it is an advanced topic to understand, that most people are not exposed to when they are young, we wanted to break it down in a way that is easy to understand. Hence we came up with the idea of portraying ‘objects’ as clay.
By playing around with something as familiar as play-dough, we were able to portray some very important elements of Topology, such as Homeomorphism, which makes a doughnut equivalent to a teacup. Laura and I met together to complete our ‘storyboard’, and talked about which ideas we wanted to portray.
The Story-writing process goes a little like this:
“Through my illustrations, I tried to continue the story’s goal of translating a complex mathematical topic into a tangible idea for children.
The main character molds brightly colored dough into a variety of objects that are recognizable for the targeted age group, like cups, glasses, houses, clouds.
I tried to make friendly, engaging illustrations that would appeal to children and encourage them to read on and learn more about Topology! “ (Laura Wilson, Brown ‘21)
Illustration, “A Topology World”
For more information on our project, please contact Tasha and Anya at jae_young_kim@brown.edu, and aparakh@risd.edu.
