Up Periscope: The Art of Science Storytelling with Author Jennifer Swanson

It's a book birthday! Join us in celebrating Jen Swanson's latest book: Up Periscope! How Engineer Raye Montague Revolutionized Shipbuilding (and check out the contest below to enter to win an autographed copy).

Get ready to blast off into a world where science meets storytelling with our special guest Jen Swanson, the NASA STEMfluencer who is making waves with more than 40 nonfiction books for kids (and their curious adults), as well as her inspiring podcast Solve It for Kids. In this episode, we journey through Jen's path to becoming a NASA STEMfluencer, her firsthand experiences at the Kennedy Space Center during the Artemis One launch, and her exciting astronaut encounters. We discuss her passion for bringing the wonders of STEM to children  as a way of fostering future innovators.

Jen is incredible at taking big concepts that are difficult and boiling them down to small things that people can understand. We delve into the craft of nonfiction writing and the importance of connecting with experts to bring authenticity to the page. Hear how Jen's book Astronaut-Aquanaut, benefited from insights provided by real-life space and sea adventurers, and how a bold request led to a private tour of the renowned CERN facility. We also examine the educational power of STEM books, from creatively teaching car safety in Save the Crash Test Dummies to highlighting the importance of climate awareness in Footprints Across the Planet. Join us as we celebrate the art of making science relatable and the educators who seamlessly weave these narratives into their classrooms, igniting curiosity and a passion for knowledge in their students.

PLUS: Just in time for the holidays, enter to win an autographed copy of Jen's latest book, Up Periscope! How Engineer Raye Montague Revolutionized Shipbuilding Discover the hidden figure who created the first comprehensive computer program to design ships for the US Navy. Award-winning author Jennifer Swanson and acclaimed illustrator Veronica Miller Jamison celebrate a self-made engineer who worked around anyone and anything that stood in her way in this illuminating picture book biography about never giving up on your dreams. To enter, send me a message by Dec. 10, 2024, explaining why you should win this wonderful picture book and who you want it autographed for!

You can watch the entire episode on YouTube

Chapters

• 0:01 Blast Off with Author, Speaker, and NASA STEMfluencer Jen Swanson
• 11:05 Research Process and Building Connections
• 21:06 STEM Books and Science Education

Transcript

It's a book birthday! Join us in celebrating Jen Swanson's latest book: Up Periscope! How Engineer Raye Montague Revolutionized Shipbuilding (and check out the contest below to enter to win an autographed copy).

Get ready to blast off into a world where science meets storytelling with our special guest Jen Swanson, the NASA STEMfluencer who is making waves with more than 40 nonfiction books for kids (and their curious adults), as well as her inspiring podcast Solve It for Kids. In this episode, we journey through Jen's path to becoming a NASA STEMfluencer, her firsthand experiences at the Kennedy Space Center during the Artemis One launch, and her exciting astronaut encounters. We discuss her passion for bringing the wonders of STEM to children  as a way of fostering future innovators.

Jen is incredible at taking big concepts that are difficult and boiling them down to small things that people can understand. We delve into the craft of nonfiction writing and the importance of connecting with experts to bring authenticity to the page. Hear how Jen's book Astronaut-Aquanaut, benefited from insights provided by real-life space and sea adventurers, and how a bold request led to a private tour of the renowned CERN facility. We also examine the educational power of STEM books, from creatively teaching car safety in Save the Crash Test Dummies to highlighting the importance of climate awareness in Footprints Across the Planet. Join us as we celebrate the art of making science relatable and the educators who seamlessly weave these narratives into their classrooms, igniting curiosity and a passion for knowledge in their students.

PLUS: Just in time for the holidays, enter to win an autographed copy of Jen's latest book, Up Periscope! How Engineer Raye Montague Revolutionized ShipbuildingDiscover the hidden figure who created the first comprehensive computer program to design ships for the US Navy. Award-winning author Jennifer Swanson and acclaimed illustrator Veronica Miller Jamison celebrate a self-made engineer who worked around anyone and anything that stood in her way in this illuminating picture book biography about never giving up on your dreams. To enter, send me a message by Dec. 6, 2024, explaining why you should win this wonderful picture book and who you want it autographed for!

You can watch the entire episode on YouTube.

Jennifer Swanson  is the creator and cohost of the Solve It! for Kids Podcast. Her motto is: Science Rocks! A STEM enthusiast, Swanson encourages kids of all ages to engage their curiosity and discover the science all around them. An accomplished speaker, she has presented at National Science Teachers Association conferences, the World Science Festival, the Highlights Foundation, the Atlanta Science Festival, and the Library of Congress’ National Book Festival. Her over 40 published nonfiction books for children and have received many accolades including the Parents’ Choice Gold Award, National Science Teachers Assn. (NSTA) BEST STEM awards, the Green Earth Book Honor Award, a Florida Book Award, and multiple California Reading Association awards, among many others.

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:01] Dr Diane: Wonder curiosity connection. Where will your adventures take you? I'm Dr. Diane, and thank you for joining me on today's episode of Adventures in Learning. So welcome to the Adventures in Learning podcast. I am so excited to start the new year with somebody that you are absolutely going to love. We have a NASA stemfluencer. We have a nonfiction artist extraordinaire. She's also a dear friend. And I'm so excited to welcome Jen Swanson to the show. So, Jen, welcome to the show.

[00:44] Jen Swanson: Thanks for having me, Diane. I'm so excited to be on the show with you. We're going to have fun.

[00:49] Dr Diane: Are, you know, I actually want to start with your podcast because you have a very cool podcast that you started during the pandemic, and I was wondering if you could tell people a little bit about it and maybe we can send some folks over to take a listen.

[01:03] Jen Swanson: Oh, that would be great. Sure. So it's called Solve It for Kids Podcast. And yes, as you said, I started it during the pandemic because I have met some amazing scientists and engineers and experts in my 15 years as a children's author. I've traveled all over the place, and my goal was to get these people connected with kids so kids could hear, kids and families could hear what they do. Because a lot of people think scientists and engineers are kind of boring and they do boring jobs, but when you talk to them, they're really passionate. We've had 186 guests that have ranged from astronauts to famous aquanauts like Fabian Cousteau, to engineers barely out of college who are now their job is to create different types of toilet paper. Right. That's so cool. Right? It's so fun. And at the end of every episode, we have a challenge for all of our listeners to go out and learn something or do something or observe the outside. So we have a lot of fun and we're gaining in popularity, but we can always use new listeners. But, yeah, it's been so much fun. This is one of the absolute favorite things I do for my job.

[02:27] Dr Diane: And I love that structure of bringing in somebody interesting and then giving a challenge so that you've got the interactive, engaged part. If you were to pick a favorite episode or one that surprised you, that you weren't expecting to be as cool as it was, what would it be?

[02:44] Jen Swanson: Okay, so there's so many, and it's so hard to pick a favorite. I'll give you a couple of them. One, the very first one we did with Dr. Brian Helmuth, who is one of my very dear friends. He is an Aquanaut at Helmuth lab at Nahant Marine Science Center and he and his team worked on a secret underwater forest, for which I have a book coming out about next year. But his was, how do you map an underwater forest? And the challenge is, which we've actually had some teachers do, having kids map an underwater forest. Now, the key to this is it's really dark down there under the ocean, and so they get to do all these cool things. We've had an episode with a black hole scientist where he played the sounds of a black hole. And then most recently, we've had two episodes from astrobiologists who are talking about life on other planets. So these are some of my really favorite ones. And I think those last two were the ones that surprised me, because it's like, if you want to communicate with an alien, one of the first things you should think about is where they live. And I was like, whoa, that's an intriguing thought. Right?

[04:05] Dr Diane: Really cool.

[04:06] Jen Swanson: Yeah. Like I said, it's a lot of fun. I love this. And my podcast partner is Jeff Gonyea, and he is also tons of fun. So we just have a rip roaring good time on this podcast.

[04:19] Dr Diane: Well, and I love your enthusiasm. I'm imagining that's that same enthusiasm that has led you to write as many books as you have, and that's made you a NASA stemfluencer or a NASA influencer. How did you fall in with NASA? Maybe tell us a little bit about that.

[04:37] Jen Swanson: By accident. I mean, I have always loved space. I think I've written four books about space now. So, of course, I'm very familiar with NASA and researching and all that kind of stuff. I live not far from Kennedy Space center, so we used to go down there a lot. But of course, with the resurgence of everything that's going on with SpaceX and the space tourism, if that's what you want to call it, and all of these different things. My husband and I went down to Kennedy Space center, and we saw Artemis 1 launch, which was the coolest thing ever. And when I was trying to figure out how to do that and get tickets, Some people wait in line online for Taylor Swift tickets. I waited online 2 Hours for the Artemis 1 Tickets.

[05:27] Dr Diane: I love it.

[05:28] Jen Swanson: STEM geek here. But I discovered that NASA has these things called NASA Socials, and anybody can apply. And I was like, well, if you know me for 15 years, what are people going to say? No? Okay. So I just sent things in, and I was like, okay, this is what I am. And I write books for kids, and I have a podcast. And I do all these things. And to My utter shock, I was picked for one in April. And so I flew to NASA Johnson Space center, and I was in the big. We were at the airport when they announced the Artemis Two astronauts, and then we got to meet them.

[06:16] Dr Diane: Wow.

[06:17] Jen Swanson: I mean, it's crazy. And then we spent the next two days going around NASA Johnson. We went to the neutral buoyancy lab. We saw and sat in the Lunar rover prototype, and I was like, this is the best field trip ever. That's what one of the teachers said that was on this trip. SO If YOu're interested, and you have to have a bit of a platform in order to do it, of course, but apply. And so I did that. And then I went to Lockheed Martin, and I was there for one of their social events and then went back to NASA and applied again and was at Kennedy Space center and saw the Psyche mission launch. I did not actually get to see the launch because they moved it a day. And I had to leave to go talk to 400 teachers in St. Louis, which I was very happy to do so. But I did get into the vehicle assembly building, which is also a dream come true. I mean, it's kind of, like, wild. I don't know how I did it, but I'm loving every second of it.

[07:23] Dr Diane: That just sounds Incredible. And I'm listening to your enthusiasm, and it's making me suspect that you have always been a lover of science. Am I right?

[07:33] Jen Swanson: Oh, yes. I tell this story, but it's true. I started a science club in my garage when I was seven. Yes, I did.

[07:41] Dr Diane: Who was in this club?

[07:42] Jen Swanson: Well, my brothers and I conned everybody in the neighborhood. I mean, this is a long time ago. Back then, when you were seven and you could roam around your tiny little town.

[07:50] Dr Diane: Understood. I had the same experience.

[07:53] Jen Swanson: Right. The freedom that you had. And my mom bought me a microscope, which I still have to this day, many years later. But, yeah, I've loved science my whole life. I studied science, or I studied chemistry at the Naval Academy, and then I have my master's degree in K-8 science education. So, yeah, science is pretty much everything that I do and I love.

[08:17] Dr Diane: Well, and let's talk a little bit about your adventures in learning, because you just kind of skimmed over a huge part of your biography right there. It's really interesting and pioneering in a way. I mean, to have gone through the Naval Academy when you did, to become then a K-8 science specialist. Talk a little bit about what you’ve done and how that's influenced your writing career now.

[08:42] Jen Swanson: So, yeah, I was in the 11th class that had women at the Naval Academy. I was in a class in 1990, and that was interesting because everybody's still adjusting to how this is going to work. And I took chemistry, which was hard because at the Naval Academy, everybody, even the English majors, take three years of math and engineering, like hardcore calculus, all this stuff. So I was very close to being almost like a chemical engineer when I came out. And it was tough, but it was really funny because when I was at there, I made a really good connection with one of my professors, Professor Joe Lomax. And from the academy, I actually went and taught chemistry at the Naval Academy Prep School for 18 months. But when I came back as a teacher at NAPS and met with Dr. Lomax, he told me something that kind of changed my life. He said, you are very good at taking big concepts that are difficult and boiling them down to small things that people can understand. And at the time, I think I was, what, 25, 26? It was like, okay, yeah. But later, after I got out of the Navy and we had children and I was a stay at home mom, and I decided, hey, I think I want to write. That kind of stuck with me because I was like, well, what am I going to write? And I tried fiction, picture books, which are easy. No, I was not great at that. But thankfully, one of my mentors was like, well, why don't you write science books? And it was like a light bulb. And all of a sudden, the things that you remember that your teachers say about you kind of all come together. Right. And it was like, oh, this is what I'm supposed to do. Okay. So that's kind of how I started writing books.

[10:40] Dr Diane: I love. You know, I wanted to talk a little bit about your process because I was fortunate enough, I took Jen's class recently with the Highlights Foundation about nonfiction writing, and one of the things you said that really stuck with me was the idea of be bold.

[10:56] Jen Swanson: Yes.

[10:56] Dr Diane: And it seems like that's how you've lived your life in terms of you don't take no for an answer. You ask and see what happens. So I was wondering if you could share a little bit about sort of your research process, because I think it's fascinating, and I love the way that you have found all these super cool people who are willing to work with you on a book. I was thinking about your Astronaut-Aquanaut book.

[11:20] Jen Swanson: Right.

[11:21] Dr Diane: But so many of your books, you've just reached out and.

[11:25] Jen Swanson: Yes, well, and again, it kind of surprises me in some ways. But I think if you approach it professionally, right? You're like, I'm a professional author. I do this. So when I was writing my book about Astronaut-Aquanaut, I'm comparing and contrasting two completely different amazing extreme environments. And I decided that, yes, I could get a lot of the research online, but I was like, how cool to find real aquanauts and astronauts who have done this, been there, right? Because National Geographic Kids was not going to pay for me to go there.

[12:04] Dr Diane: Right, right.

[12:06] Jen Swanson: Which I would with. I found a website. Aquarius is the underwater research lab off the coast of Florida. It's the only one in the world at the moment. And there was this name that just this professor, Dr. Brian Helmuth, that just kept coming up and coming up and coming up. And I was like, oh, wait, he works at a university. I was like, I can find his email. And so I just emailed him, and I sent him an email, and I was Dr. Helmuth, you know, I'm working on a book. Are you interested? And he emailed me back right away. And then we struck up a conversation, and then he knew Fabian Cousteau, who then I got to be introduced to and meet, which is.

[12:54] Dr Diane: That's so cool.

[12:55] Jen Swanson: Like, mind boggling. I don't know. Did you grow up watching Cousteau's? Right.

[13:00] Dr Diane: So I'm totally geeking out about the fact that you know…

[13:02] Jen Swanson: I'm like, oh, my gosh, I grew up watching your grandfather all the. So. But then I needed an astronaut because Fabian offered to do the forward. One of my other friends knew Dr. Kathy Sullivan.

[13:19] Dr Diane: That's cool.

[13:20] Jen Swanson: Who was the first US woman to walk in space. And so I was connected with, you know, it's just kind of a network of connections. And Brian Helmuth knows a bunch of other people. Like, I needed an astronaut. And he happened to know the NASA administrator at the time, who was Charlie Bolden. And he said, you should ask him because I wasn't having a lot of luck going through NASA PR. So I emailed the NASA administrator, and he happened to be a Naval Academy graduate. I was like, dear sir, will you help out a classmate and I got connected with astronaut Katie Coleman, who is phenomenal. If you don't follow her and you're into space, you should. So you just ask. Now, again, they don't always work out. Sometimes they ignore you. Sometimes they're like, who are you? I don't know. I'm not doing this right. But I'm like, this is what I told you guys in the class, be bold. Ask. Right? They can't say no if you don't ask. And if they do, oh, well.

[14:30] Dr Diane: And you don't make the shots, you don't take either, right?

[14:33] Jen Swanson: I mean, it's crazy. Asks. I asked if I could. This is how I got to visit CERN. CERN is the Large Hadron Collider. And I wanted to do a book on particle physics, and I got really interested in the Alice detector, which studies quark-gluon plasmas, like right after the Big Bang. And I knew that they were having an open house. Well, an open house at CERN is like, again, kind of like a Taylor Swift concert. There's a certain amount of tickets. So we had visited earlier in the year, and so I just emailed the PR person and was like, hey, this is who I am. Can you just give me two of the 20,000 or 10,000 whatever tickets that you have? Then my husband and I will fly over from the US. Two weeks later, I get an email that says, we would love to have you come. Don't come during open day. Come two weeks later and we'll give you your own private tour.

[15:34] Dr Diane: Wow.

[15:35] Jen Swanson: I was like, I'm sorry. I called my husband over and go, what does this email say again? Are they serious? So I flew over there with my son and daughter in law, and we got to visit the Alice detector and go down underground. And unfortunately, that was like, right before the pandemic. So the particle physics book is still in the works, but hopefully will be coming in the next year or so.

[16:04] Dr Diane: That is so cool. One of the things I'm hearing sort of as you're talking is you've got a really cool way of building connections. It's not just the idea of taking a big topic and narrowing it down to something people understand. I think you also are able to take that topic and say, okay, this connects here and it might connect over here. So you think about connections in ways that other people don't, which is one of the reasons I love you so much. And it's one of the reasons I love the book. Footprints Across the Planet, for example. If you don't know, that's Jen's latest book and it's out right now, and it's absolutely amazing. But in Footprints , you really used very sparse text to build some connections to really big concepts. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that book for our audience as well.

[16:53] Jen Swanson: So Footprints Across the Planet is a book that I wanted to write to talk to kids, positively about kind of what's going on in the world, specifically climate change. But it's also some of the other big issues that we're addressing. And I was trying to figure out what is the easiest way to talk about how we as humans make an impact on the planet. And I was like, footprints. Everybody leaves footprints every single day. And they look different in sand and mud and all of the other places. And we have different kinds of shoes, and animals make different footprints. And then we make footprints up Mount Everest. Right. And down in the ocean. We make footprints on the moon, on Mars. But we also follow in footprints of amazing people who have stood up for change and those who are trying to follow them. It was all of these different connections that just kind of brought it in a circle. And then, of course, at the end, we talk about the carbon footprint, which is important. But the big question that I wanted to leave was that, what type of imprint do you want to leave on the planet? So I wanted it to be a positive thing. And one of the exercises I do with kids is I have them draw an outline of their shoe, and then inside they draw pictures of things that they love. And I'm like, that's it. That's your imprint on the planet. That's your impact.

[18:25] Dr Diane: I love that.

[18:26] Jen Swanson: Do you want to change it? If so, draw new things. But, yeah, this book is one of my very near and dear to my heart books. And it's gorgeously. The photographs, I mean, I was going to say illustrated, but it's not illustration.

[18:43] Dr Diane: No, but the photographs are incredible. Honestly, I would put this book hands down on a best of 2023 list anywhere.

[18:52] Jen Swanson: Thanks. Yeah. Footprints Across the Planet. You can find it on my website. And I also have a really cool book trailer that goes along with this, too, which is all free there.

[19:02] Dr Diane: So, yeah, I mean, if you're a teacher or a parent who's looking for something that's going to absolutely engage your kids, this is the book for you.

[19:11] Jen Swanson: Well, and can I just say, my son's mother in law gives this book as a baby gift.

[19:16] Dr Diane: It's a great choice.

[19:18] Jen Swanson: Yeah, I didn't even think about it, but, yeah, so I sign plates for her all the time.

[19:24] Dr Diane: I love that. So I said, this is one of my favorite picks. What are some books that are influencing you right now or books that you really love?

[19:34] Jen Swanson: Oh, my gosh.

[19:36] Dr Diane: You can include your own as well.

[19:38] Jen Swanson: So I just did on NPR Science Friday. You can listen to me talking about my favorite STEM picks for the year. There are so many. There's so many. Let's see. I think one that comes to mind is Rajani LaRocca’s A Vaccine Is Like a Memory, and I love it, not just because of the cool science in it, but she's written it in such a way that she's helping us to see that vaccines are important. It's important to remember what they have done for us as well. And then I'm trying to remember the other one that I had, The Museum on the Moon, which is a really cool one, and is about all of the things that humans have left on the moon so far, right? Like, besides footprints. We've left the landers and all of these things. And it's done so well, and it's written in this lyrical, beautiful language. The books of mine, I always have a hard time talking, picking, like, kids are always asking what's your favorite?

[20:44] Dr Diane: That's like asking, who's your favorite child?

[20:47] Jen Swanson: Right? See, you get it. I mean, a couple of the ones that I've already mentioned, Footprints Across the Planet. Astronaut-Aquanaut,  probably one of my all time favorites is the very first one I ever did, which is Brain Games from National Geographic Kids. And it was based on the TV show Brain Games. That was the very first time that I wrote a trade book and I had to watch the TV show and turn it into a book.

[21:13] Dr Diane: That’s really cool and challenging.

[21:17] Jen Swanson: I was going to say it was not easy to do. But the crazy thing is, I've heard a lot of, I've met so many neurologists in real life who give this to their adult patients because it breaks down what your brain does, and then it has you do a lot of activities to check on how your brain is cool. Yeah. And then one of my other ones is a book called Save the Crash Test Dummies. I love that one, which is a history of car safety engineering, which everyone's like, oh, I'm not going to read a book about that. But it's kind of told through the eyes of a crash test dummy, which is really fun. And the cool thing is, I actually got to present that book at the National Book Festival at the Library of Congress back in 2019, which was really fun.

[22:07] Dr Diane: That is really cool.

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[23:22] Dr Diane: So if you were a teacher and you're wondering, why should we use nonfiction, what would you tell them?

[23:41] Jen Swanson: Because it's cool. I mean, first of all, you have a lot of kids in there that love nonfiction. Whether you realize it or not, there's going to be the kids that love nonfiction. There's the kids that love fiction. And there's a couple of different kinds of nonfiction, too, because a lot of teachers go right to the narrative nonfiction, which is good because they have stories. But then there's the fact kids, and that was right. That is the fact kids, and they are just hungry for facts. It's like, think of the adults that play jeopardy. They were once kids, right? Yes. And so those expository nonfiction books are amazing. And when I talk to teachers, books, even STEM books, can be used in all kinds of classrooms. Don't just think science.

[24:29] Dr Diane: Exactly.

[24:30] Jen Swanson: There's a lot of different ways you could break down a STEM book in an ELA class. Like, why did they write about this topic? Why did they choose this information to go in this book? When challenge your students to find information about this topic that's not in the book and then be like, oh, I like that. Why didn't they put that in there? There's so many ways you can use books, STEM books in the classroom.

[24:57] Dr Diane: Well, and I like the idea of not teaching in a silo, too, because I think all too often we put STEM sort of off on its own. It's the afterthought, and it really should be centered in the curriculum because you can do so many things with it. And as you said, you can build in the reading and the writing, and kids are interested in it, whether it's the STEM that's Astronaut-Aquanautor whether it's the STEM that's animals or climate change or the world around us or Crash Test Dummies. Yes. All of that is important to understanding the world in which we live and how to move forward. I mean, I taught preschool for years.

[25:38] Jen Swanson: Yes.

[25:39] Dr Diane: And yes, I loved my picture books because the kids loved them, but they really loved it when I read nonfiction to them. And we could explore those pictures, and I would leave those books out in our centers, and I would see two and three heads bent over them, turning the pages and going, oh, look at the brain.

[26:01] Jen Swanson: Things like that.

[26:02] Dr Diane: They loved it. And those were the kids who were going to go start those science clubs, too.

[26:06] Jen Swanson: Exactly. Well, I mean, I did a school visit yesterday, and I had to talk to pre K and one, and the talk was the science all around you. And I love when I do this because they get so excited. I said, okay, everybody look around the room. What do you see? That's science. And they're like the computer, the lights, but some of them are like the carpet, the chairs. And I'm like, yes, that's all science and engineering. And you can just see their little eyes light up. So it's so fun getting people to realize, people of all ages to realize that science is all around you is something that is one of my missions.

[26:47] Dr Diane: I love that. And it ties in across the board. I had Holden Thorp of Science magazine on the podcast earlier in the year, and he said the exact same thing. He's like, we really need to focus on K-12 schools and making science fun and relevant from the very beginning. And I think that's exactly what you're trying to do, and certainly what I'm trying to do as well. And I think there are a lot of teachers out there who would like to do it and just need the tools to feel confident in what they're doing.

[27:16] Jen Swanson: Exactly. Yeah. It's difficult to do science in the curriculum that they have these days. A lot of the schools, they're so structured that science is maybe once a week, if you're lucky, twice a week. But there are those amazing teachers who sneak it in all over different places, too. It's usually if they're comfortable with it, too, because there could be a level of you're not sure about things. And so what I would like to say to all those teachers is, no one knows the right answer with science. Right. Like, you can be wrong. You can not know. That's okay. Share that with your students. Be like, let's look this up together.

[27:55] Dr Diane: Exactly. And I think that's huge. You have to be willing to be vulnerable with them, and they respect that because you're also modeling how do we think critically and how do we look at the information to be able to figure out in a cacophony of stuff, what's factual and what's not, and be flexible, because, as you said, things change. That's the beauty of science, is we are evolving as we learn more, and we have to be willing to say, you know what? I was wrong. Let's move forward.

[28:26] Jen Swanson: And that happens all the time. I mean, if you listen to the podcast, we've had so many scientists and engineers be like, well, we were sure this is what was going to happen. And no, that's not what happened. We learned something different. And then they go off on a different tangent, which is fine. This is what science and engineering is.

[28:45] Dr Diane: That's the beauty of being able to learn and being a flexible human being.

[28:49] Jen Swanson: Yes, exactly.

[28:50] Dr Diane: So what's coming up for you in the new year?

[28:54] Jen Swanson: So I have two books out next year. I'm really excited about the first one. It's with Dr. Brian Helmuth and the team at Nahat Marine Research Center. And it's called The Lost Forest: An Unexpected Discovery Beneath the Waves. And it's all about this ancient 60,000 year old forest that was uncovered by a hurricane a few years ago. And it's Cyprus, so Cypress trees, which is unusual, and some of them are still standing. They're like 5ft tall or whatever. So that book is coming out next year, and that's with Millbrook Press. And the cool thing is they put a lot of little QR codes with actual video that the scientists took, so kids can see that. All you have to do is click on the QR code. Yeah. And then the other one is Up Periscope, and it is with Little Brown. And that book is about the hidden figure of the Navy, Ray Montague, who I was honored to be able to speak with before she passed away. And she is the first person, not just the first African American female, the first person to design a computer system for creating a blueprint for aircraft carrier. Well, not just aircraft carriers, I should say ships. So it's all about shipbuilding, but she was the first one to design this computer program for shipbuilding. And it's an incredible story and she was an incredible woman. And the illustrator of that is Victoria Jameson. And she did a fabulous job. I just proofed the illustrations. Whoa. That's just gorgeous. And then in 2025, I am co authoring the next Atlas Obscura book.

[30:47] Dr Diane: Very cool.

[30:48] Jen Swanson: I'm so excited about it. That one's going to be coming out. I think it's called Atlas Obscura, the Kids Guide to Inventing

[30:58] Dr Diane: So what kind of topics are going to be in this.

[31:03] Jen Swanson: Mean? So if you're familiar with Atlas Obscura, it is an adult company kind of travel company. So basically, we're doing snippets of places you could visit around the world to see all of these incredible inventions. And I'm co authoring it with one of the Atlas Obscura founders, Dylan Thores. And it's just so cool. It's so much fun. So it combines two of my loves, travel and inventions instead.

[31:32] Dr Diane: That is the dream.

[31:34] Jen Swanson: It is, right? Yes.

[31:35] Dr Diane: So do you get to travel to check out these places as you're going?

[31:40] Jen Swanson: I pretty much do, yes. Wherever I go, whatever travel, even my husband and I do, our family does on our own. We always do science things. For example, we were in Edinburgh last week and we went to the coolest science museum I've been to in a long time called Dynamic Earth. And it was all about plate tectonics and volcanoes and how Edinburgh was formed. But it was all interactive. It's like videos and then touching things and they take you on a time machine.

[32:11] Dr Diane: Oh, that's cool.

[32:12] Jen Swanson: I was like, this is amazing. So, yes, we did visit the castle and do all the history things, too, but we also went to the science museums.

[32:21] Dr Diane: I can never resist a good science museum. I like those things.

[32:25] Jen Swanson: Exactly.

[32:27] Dr Diane: So last question for today. What brings you hope for the future, kids?

[32:36] Jen Swanson: Right now? It's tough. It's tough for everybody. Businesses are tough and all this kind of stuff. And I will admit, in publishing, the world goes up and down. It's literally, I've said before, like being on a chutes and ladders game. But yesterday, my school visit where I talked to over 800 kids and they were so excited and they were so curious and they had so many great suggestions. We were talking about one of my other books, Beastly Bionics, and about how we might create something bionic based on an animal to help the world. And the ideas that they came up with, they give me hope. They give me hope.

[33:18] Dr Diane: That's awesome. And so, Jen Swanson, if people would like to follow your podcast and follow your books and follow your NASA influencing, where do they go?

[33:28] Jen Swanson: So my main website is jenniferswansonbooks.com. That's where you find all. I have free videos and teacher guides, and you can go from there to all of my other places. But my podcast is called Solve it for Kids. We have a website, solveforkids.com. I've also run steamteambooks.com. If you're looking for up and coming STEM/STEAM books that are coming out every year. And I also run STEM Tuesday, which is a blog for teachers to get ideas for how to use these books in the classroom. And you can find me on social media. I am at Jen Swan Books at, let's see, Facebook, X, Threads, Instagram, YouTube. Also I have a big Pinterest page which has tons of resources. Just look me up. I think I'm like Jen Swan 1222 there.

[34:25] Dr Diane: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and we can't wait to see what's next. And listen, seriously, check out all the resources because Jen has done the work for you.

[34:36] Jen Swanson: Thanks so much for having me, Diane. It was so much fun chatting with you.

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