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Gift guide · 11 books

Science heroes for kids

Picture books and middle-grade stories about real scientists, from Ada Lovelace to Margaret Hamilton. Ages 3 to 12.

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  1. Ada Byron Lovelace and the Thinking Machine

    Laurie Wallmark · 2015

    Ages 5 to 9. Laurie Wallmark, illustrated by April Chu, tells how Ada Lovelace wrote what is often called the first computer program for Babbage's Analytical Engine.

  2. Me...Jane

    Patrick McDonnell · 2011

    Ages 3 to 7. Patrick McDonnell shows young Jane Goodall watching birds and playing with her toy chimpanzee Jubilee, and how that curiosity led to her fieldwork in Tanzania.

  3. On a Beam of Light

    A Story of Albert Einstein

    Jennifer Berne · 2013

    Ages 5 to 8. Jennifer Berne, with Vladimir Radunsky's illustrations, follows Einstein from a boy fascinated by a compass to the physicist who imagined riding a beam of light.

  4. Manfish

    A Story of Jacques Cousteau

    Jennifer Berne · 2008

    Ages 5 to 8. Jennifer Berne, illustrated by Eric Puybaret, tells how Jacques Cousteau's love of the sea led him to co-invent the aqualung and film the underwater world.

  5. Who Says Women Can't Be Doctors?

    The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell

    Tanya Lee Stone · 2013

    Ages 5 to 9. Tanya Lee Stone, with Marjorie Priceman's paintings, tells how Elizabeth Blackwell overcame rejection to become the first woman to earn a US medical degree in 1849.

  6. Solving the Puzzle Under the Sea

    Marie Tharp Draws the Ocean Floor

    Robert Burleigh · 2016

    Ages 6 to 9. Robert Burleigh, illustrated by Raul Colon, describes how Marie Tharp mapped the Mid-Atlantic Ridge from sonar data and helped confirm continental drift.

  7. Rachel Carson and Her Book That Changed the World

    Laurie Lawlor · 2012

    Ages 6 to 9. Laurie Lawlor, illustrated by Laura Beingessner, follows the marine biologist from childhood in Pennsylvania to writing Silent Spring, on the harm done by pesticides.

  8. Margaret and the Moon

    How Margaret Hamilton Saved the First Lunar Landing

    Dean Robbins · 2017

    Ages 5 to 9. Dean Robbins, illustrated by Lucy Knisley, tells how programmer Margaret Hamilton wrote the flight software that handled a computer overload during the Apollo 11 landing.

  9. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

    Young Readers Edition

    William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer · 2015

    Ages 8 to 12. William Kamkwamba tells how, at 14 during Malawi's 2001 famine, he built a windmill from scrap to power his family's home with electricity.

  10. Hidden Figures

    Young Readers' Edition

    Margot Lee Shetterly · 2016

    Ages 8 to 12. Margot Lee Shetterly adapts her book on Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, Black women mathematicians whose calculations supported NASA's early spaceflights.

  11. Marie Curie

    Little People, Big Dreams

    Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara · 2017

    Ages 4 to 7. This short picture book follows Marie Curie from Warsaw to Paris, and to two Nobel Prizes for her work on radioactivity.

Chosen by the Today Got Better desk. No publisher pays for a place on this list. Updated September 2026.

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