Fall STEAM Ahead! STEAM-Infused Books and Experiences To Engage Learners This Fall
- amiller8979
- Sep 24
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 27
by Amber Miller
September 21, 2025
In a world where curiosity and wonder flourish, introducing children to the realms of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) is both exciting and essential. Picture books not only engage young minds but also provide a gateway to exploration and discovery.
From engaging biographies about scientists and mathematicians to titles focusing on how machinery works or the complexities of space, STEAM books open up entirely new worlds for readers of all ages and stages. Having STEAM books in your classroom library will spark your students’ interest in the world around them. You can also use these great books throughout the school year to introduce science concepts.
Just in time for Fall, I’ve curated a selection of picture books featuring captivating stories with multicultural perspectives and vibrant illustrations, perfect for preschool to elementary readers, that will be perfect additions to your classroom shelves. Additionally, I've included three middle-grade novels that have captured my heart — perfect for novel studies and read-alouds, teaching empathy, and using as launch pads into problem-based learning. Let's delve into these fascinating tales and accompanying STEAM activities, which are sure to spark imagination and curiosity in young learners.
What happens when you're born with a purple thumb? Enter the world of Prunella, a girl who prefers corpse flowers to carnations and poison ivy to petunias. After reading about Prunella and her spiny friends, inspire your young botanists to research and plant a garden of creepy and eccentric plants. Computational thinking is involved with mapping out a garden -- even an imaginary one -- and science and the arts unite in the design of the creepy plant garden.
A girl and her dog are ready to make something. She gathers her supplies, and they head to her favorite workspace - only to discover that her neighbor, along with her cat, got there first! Could they collaborate on something? Magnificent idea! So the girl starts cutting, hammering, and gluing, while her neighbor considers, measures, and calculates. Her neighbor believes in constantly measuring twice and cutting once, but the girl thinks that takes way too long. Tensions start to rise as it becomes clear that they have very different working styles. And even different ideas about exactly what they're making! Can they ever work things out as a team?
Blending humor with empathy to strike just the right note, Ashley Spires perfectly captures the emotional ups and downs of working with others in this celebration of collaboration in the creative process. As the girl perseveres through technical and emotional challenges, she learns that mistakes don't mean failure and setbacks are just part of the route to success. This amusing and inspiring picture book is part of the Most Magnificent franchise that includes books, a TV series, and an award-winning short film. The series is a favorite among educators due to its focus on growth mindset, and this title highlights another critical theme in the classroom: teamwork.
Baahoy, mateys! This brand-new pun-filled pirate's yarn is sure to inspire some wild and woolly adventures! Encourage young engineers to design the perfect pirate ship with simple materials like craft sticks, foil, tape, or blocks. Experiment with sink and float. Unleash your math and artistic spirits to create the perfect pirate map as you work on sequencing and following directions.
Bonus!! Ashley's Frankenslime and Witch & Wombat make perfect Halloween pairings. You can experiment with different slime recipes (the math and science possibilities are endless) and let students create their own recipes just like in Frankenslime. For Witch & Wombat, build connections to animal adaptations. Have students research different types of adaptations and create the perfect pet. You can make connections between science and literacy by having them build their pet with found objects, then have them write/draw about the adaptations they included and why.
Wednesday Addams meets The Curious Garden in this delightfully peculiar story. Millie Fleur's Poison Garden reminds us to embrace everything that makes us wonderfully weird. Garden Glen is a very bland place. Every house and every garden looks exactly like the other. That is… until Millie Fleur La Fae comes to town.
Up on a scruffy hill, beside a ramschackle house, Millie Fleur plants her marvelously strange garden, filled with Sneezing Stickyweed, Fanged Fairymoss, and Grumpy Gilliflower. Millie Fleur finds it enchanting, but the townspeople of Garden Glen call it poison! But Millie Fleur is proud of her beloved little garden. So if some townspeople want to be sticks in the mud, she'll take matters into her own hands and find the kindred spirits who appreciate everything the garden has to offer. Read more about Millie Fluer’s Poison Garden here.
Bonus!! Newly released, and just in time for Spooky Season, is Mandin’s companion novel Millie Fleur Saves the Night! A delightfully peculiar story that encourages readers to find beauty in the darkness.
Students will be chanting along with this spunky goat as they learn to shake off their troubles through persistence and outside-the-box thinking. Encourage creativity by inviting children to design their own solutions to the little goat's problems. You can also use this book as a springboard for self-portraits about what makes each of your students special and unique, fostering a love for STEAM and the arts.
It's Not Nothing to create a middle-grade novel filled with unforgettable, three-dimensional characters that leave you wanting more -- primarily when the story centers on a 107-year-old Holocaust survivor and a 12-year-old boy with a deep secret who is forced to do community service in a senior home. But this book is magical. It is both funny and moving, and it teaches essential lessons about rising to the occasion in our lives. Read this powerful book as a class, then explore ways to share stories with the people in your community. Bonus!! Gayle Forman has several fantastic resources for this book on her website, including Operation Rise, Holocaust history, intergenerational learning, and (for a limited time) free virtual author visits!
For your middle school readers, Mid-Air by Newbery Honor award-winning author Alicia D. Williams is sure to be a hit! This novel in verse is a stunning tale of love, loss, and hope. It's a beautiful book to jumpstart meaningful conversations about being true to yourself and figuring out what moves your spirit.
Ask students to create visual representations (such as drawings, paintings, or collages) of a key scene in the book that had a significant impact on them or have them create a playlist of at least ten songs that resonate with a specific character's emotions and experiences, and provide an explanation for their song choices.
Lucy is self-conscious about what makes her unique. After being struck by lightning at the age of 8, part of the left lobe of her brain completely stopped working, which resulted in the right lobe working overtime. As a result, Lucy has genius-level math skills, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and has been homeschooled since the incident. Now, at the age of 12, Lucy is academically ready for college; she needs to get past middle school and all of its social requirements to pass the test! At school, Lucy makes two new friends with whom she works on a school project and meets a dog whom she comes to love, but cannot keep. During her middle school years, Lucy realizes that school is more than just academics, and, contrary to her previous beliefs, she starts to enjoy it. She learns invaluable life lessons on being empathetic and maintaining friendships. Read my full review of The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl and find links to classroom activities here.
Unleash the curiosity and creativity of young readers with these engaging books and experiences, fostering a love for learning that transcends boundaries. With each turn of the page, a new world of exploration awaits, bridging the gap between imagination and knowledge in a multicultural landscape. Let's inspire the next generation of innovators and thinkers through the pages of these captivating reads. Happy reading and exploring!
Remember, the journey of discovery begins with a single story – where will it take you next?
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