This year we are focusing on efforts of bringing science books to high-poverty classrooms. Hands-on activities and field trips are fabulous, but books have their merits too. Until we make space travel accessible to elementary students, books about our solar system are a pretty darn good way to learn about the planets. Books are a great way to provide extra content and context to enrich those incredible hands-on activities, like creating a school arboretum on a Native American Reservation in New Mexico. Books also allow students to explore a wider range of topics than might be taught within the formal curriculum of a single school year - everything from friction, gravity, and geology to the life cycles of a whole host of plants and animals. Reading science books improves overall literacy. Classroom books can survive years of student use, and they are often more affordable than some of the science inquiry kits that teachers seek. Please take a moment to look through the projects on our challenge page and see if the topics strike your fancy or the stories from the teachers melt your heart.

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