An Engineer Like Me

A book that should be on every shelf in school to inspire young engineers whatever gender. Having said that It’s an inspiring book for encouraging more women into STEM and provides a great starting point to find out more about the female engineers.

It’s a cleverly constructed layout with wonderful lettering all along the engineer theme. Nadja’s colourful, energetic illustrations are just right. I love the way they are drawn from different viewpoints as Zara (who is curious about everything) and her gran venture out for their local walk. There are different fonts throughout which adds extra pizazz. The layout is a mixture of across double pages and some single pages with text across the whole picture in smaller sections which make it easily readable.

It’s an excellent look at engineering everywhere because Zara’s day to day life shows us that there are examples at most points in our everyday lives. From the point where Zara is in her room and Gran makes a great paper aeroplane to going down in the lift, to going up on an escalator and seeing a plane take off into the sky.

Explanations about what constitutes engineering are really clear and child appropriate-using Zara’s voice to synthesise what Gran has said is a clever way of reinforcing that.

It’s a smashing book to pick up and peruse again and again and there’s a nice challenge at the end of the book you could take up too.