2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Numerous children’s picture books are published every year that feature characters following the scientific process or the engineering design process to understand and improve their immediate world. Since 2017, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) has published an annual list of the best STEM books that select books based on criteria including problem solving, modeling innovation, and formulating creative solutions. The book lists are a valuable resource for elementary teachers who want to introduce STEM contexts in the classroom. However, one challenge that remains is understanding how the content of these STEM picture books aligns with the recommended practices of early childhood engineering education. In addition, there are no clear guidelines to help elementary education teachers identify STEM books that accurately portray engineering tasks and how to use these books to effectively introduce engineering thinking in the classroom.
An analysis of the last eight years of the Best STEM Book Lists sought out to understand the content of picture books that featured an engineering storyline. Science and math books were omitted as well as those that featured inventions or were biographies about inventors. Expository books that only presented facts about an engineering design, such as the Brooklyn Bridge, were also removed from analysis. A small sample of the remaining 44 books were analyzed page by page by three researchers and coded for concepts about engineering. After multiple rounds of discussions about the themes in the books, a codebook was developed and revised until the researchers reached an 80% inter-rater reliability. The analysis yielded themes that were aligned with the engineering habits of mind, the engineering design process, and engineering career awareness. While various models of the engineering habits of mind have been discussed in the literature, it was found that the selected books in this study focused on the engineering dispositions of optimism, resilience, curiosity, and creativity but left out important skills such as systems thinking, discussing tradeoffs, and addressing failure. Many of the books analyzed were detailed in describing the stages of ideation, problem scoping, prototyping and iteration but few discussed circuitous pathways to a solution. Few were specifically about careers.
The analysis in this study reveals that high quality engineering children’s picture books often feature characters that model the ways of thinking as well as how engineers follow a step by step design process to solve problems. K-5 teachers should use these books to introduce how engineers think about problems, the process to arrive at solutions, and the various engineering careers students could pursue. A rubric was developed to help teachers identify their own engineering books that can address the three areas. Teachers can then use these books to develop design challenges and have students practice engineering tasks.