Engineered!: Engineering Design at Work

I bought this as part of the 4th grade science curriculum from Blossom and Root. We haven’t even started yet and both of my kids are fascinated. I love the outline of the engineering process in the beginning. They love the “gross” problems that were solved (printing a skin substitute, solving a sewage problem), and it is really a great educational resource. The illustrations are fun and colorful so it helps hold their interest. The explanations are easy to understand. Highly recommend.

My daughter is an elementary teacher and I sent it to her 3 rd grade son. He seems interested in science and engineering. My daughter told me he seems to enjoy the book.

My boy absolutely loves this book!

One's first reaction to this book might well be that it's a bit heavy on the cute illustrations and a bit light on content, but on a closer look that's not at all the case. The drawings have a busy, "Where's Waldo?", look, but there's a lot going on in them and they are worth careful examination. Once you get the way the individual chapters are organized, everything else falls into place. Each chapter emphasizes a different branch of engineering. We start with a stated problem that requires an engineering solution. We define and investigate the problem, develop some possible solutions, design/build an answer/prototype, and then test, modify and optimize. Different example challenges emphasize different aspects of this process, so the chapters are not repetitive. And the problems that are addressed really span a wide range of engineering endeavors. The organizing focus on different engineering fields is an important touch. "Engineering" encompasses a lot of different specialties and introducing young readers to all of the different fields is valuable, and might be a real eye opener for that young reader. So, we get aerospace, biomedical, chemical, mechanical, electrical, civil, geomatic, computer, and environmental engineering. Not bad at all. Whether you're looking for a STEM book or you just have a little budding LEGO maniac in the house this book could be a great interest and imagination grabber. A nice find. (Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

Great for young children to find out how things work. Fabulous illustrations!

Engineered by Shannon Hunt is an excellent children’s non-fiction book — clear, informative, nicely illustrated, detailed, and logically structured, it would make an excellent addition to any child’s shelf. The book opens with a brief description of hundreds of people gathering in Times Square to watch the touchdown of Curiosity on Mars. In a single page, Hunt offers up the potential excitement of engineering via the cheering crowd, its can-do potential to solve mind-bogglingly difficult issues (“after an eight-month voyage through space”), its place in history (“the historic landing”), the amount of work required (“the technology that made it possible had originated years before”), and, via the rover’s name, the sense of curiosity that drives engineers —and children. It’s a great opening. From there Hunt steps back from the specific to a more generalized definition of who engineers are and what they do, then presents the steps in engineering design: Define, investigate, develop, create, test, optimize, share. Each of these steps is concisely but effectively defined. Once the foundation is set, Hunt moves delves into the details of several engineering fields, describing a specific real-world engineering problem and then explaining how the engineers solved it. The fields are: aerospace, biomedical, chemical, mechanical, electrical, civil, geomatic, computer, and environmental. Each problem gets a few pages, with several sidebars that offer up related information. A regular sidebar throughout is a brief bio of an engineer who worked on the particular project, along with a quote or two from the engineer. It’s a nice touch in that it offers up a bit of personal humanity amid all these large-scale projects. The projects themselves, which include a traffic jam, sewage pollution, and the loss of habitat for an endangered species, are sharply if briefly described and bring the abstract idea of “engineering” down to a more pragmatic, real world concept, showing how engineering solves issues that affect the lives of real people (or, in one case, real caribou). The language is clear and clean and does not speak down to its audience. Rather than rely on a dull, simplistic vocabulary Hunt employs lively and evocative verbs and nouns. Odors “waft” across a city, the dust of Mars “billows,” bike engineers are not “daunted” by a particularly stick issue. The language is a nice match for the excellent illustrations, which are similarly clean and clear, but offer up lovely little details. The illustrations as well as the text also present a diverse cast, beginning with the title page which shows a table surrounded by five people who are a nice mix of age, race, and gender. Engineered is a book I definitely would have picked up for my child once he got past second grade, and I highly recommend it as a gift or for any elementary school library.

Engineered! by Shannon Hunt is a great children’s non-fiction book. The book is clear, informative, nicely illustrated, detailed, and logically structured. From the Mars Rover to 3D printing to helping a herd of caribou and more, Engineered! dives into nine stories of modern engineering. Kids will learn about the engineering design process from defining the problem to sharing your solution with the world. Each story highlights the key components of the design process, taking kids on the journey through different types of engineering (aerospace, biomedical, chemical, mechanical, electrical, civil, geomatics, computer, and environmental) from seeing a problem to creating effective solutions to implementing their ideas. Coupled with great illustrations, Engineered! is sure to be a favorite of any budding engineer! There is a lot of information crammed onto each page (some pages easier to read than others, due to text size, background colour, and minimal spacing between lines of text). However, this is also works to an advantage, as there's a lot to take in on each page, with full pages of busy geometric-style illustrations. Each time you look at the images you'll be sure to find something different! There is a helpful glossary at the end, which is useful to look back on if necessary, as there certainly is a lot of information to take in. I received this ARC from Kids Can Press via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

'Engineered!: Engineering Design at Work' by Shannon Hunt with illustrations by James Gulliver Hancock may be the best book I've read for young people interested in an engineering career. In a couple introductory chapters, the reader learns about the minds of engineers, and seven basic steps of engineering design. These steps are pointed out as the book visits 9 unique engineering challenges from different fields of engineering like aerospace, civil, geomatics and others. The problems include landing a spacecraft safely on Mars, building a bridge that seems to float in the clouds, and repairing a sewer system. The challenges are explained and the main person behind the solution is given a brief biography to show their background. I've read a few S.T.E.M. books and they all seem to fail to provide what this book does, which is the curiosity, creativity and drive to solve unique problems. Those innate abilities should be the spark of any young persons interest in these fields. The illustrations and pictures help to keep the text lively. I received a review copy of this ebook from Kids Can Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

Interesting, and informational... but also fairly straight forward and underwhelming.. Not a ton of information for learning..

Great book, my son is 11 and really loved it