Who Is a Scientist?

by Laura Gehl

Overview

Scientists work hard in the lab and in the field to make important discoveries. But who are they really?

It turns out they are just like us! Scientists can be any race. And any gender. They can wear lab coats, jeans, or even tutus. And they are people who love to fly drones, make art, and even eat French fries!

Meet fourteen phenomenal scientists who might just change the way you think about who a scientist is. They share their scientific work in fields like entomology, meteorology, paleontology, and engineering as well as other interesting facts about themselves and their hobbies. An "if you like this, you'll like that" flowchart in the back of the book helps students identify science careers they might be interested in. Scan a QR code at the end of the book for a video of the scientists introducing themselves!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541597990
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/05/2021
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	9.60(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	740L (what's this?)
Age Range:	7 - 8 Years

About the Author

Laura Gehl is the award-winning author of more than three dozen picture books, board books, and early readers including Who Is a Scientist?, I Got a Chicken for My Birthday, Dibs!, and Climate Warriors: Fourteen Scientists and Fourteen Ways to Save our Planet. A former science teacher with a PhD in neuroscience, Laura lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with her husband and four children.

Editorial Reviews

"The photographs reflect the world's diversity . . . Both selection of information and presentation have been thoughtfully designed to appeal to young readers. Convincing evidence that readers, too, might become scientists."—starred, Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

★ 2021-09-15
Profiles of a diverse selection of 14 21st-century scientists reveal a wide range of specialties and avocations.

To answer her title question, Gehl introduces working scientists, spread by spread, with a relatively simple text and two photographs—one at work and one at play. From meteorologist to agroecologist to software engineer, from laboratory to desert to forest, her examples represent a variety of occupational fields and workplaces. Their hobbies—painting, cooking, surfing, playing basketball or soccer, listening to live music, and so forth—are equally varied. The photographs also reflect the world’s diversity: There’s a White woman with magenta hair and colorfully tattooed arms, a Black belly dancer in classic costume, a Puerto Rican champion of Indigenous food systems, and a White man who uses forearm crutches to get about in the field. A neuroscientist wears a Sikh turban; an astronomer, a headscarf. As might be expected with such a range, some readers may find some scientists’ names challenging to pronounce, but the backmatter includes a phonetic guide to every single name—even the neuroscientist author’s. A final spread summarizes what scientists do and invites readers to imagine themselves among this group. Both selection of information and presentation have been thoughtfully designed to appeal to young readers. This will be useful in many a second or third grade classroom, and the publisher has made a teaching guide and video available.

Convincing evidence that readers, too, might become scientists. (Nonfiction. 6-9)

Kirkus Reviews