Inspire your curious kids with these fun picture books about inventions and inventors. The list includes pictures books about the joy found in turning one's mind towards inventing and creating, as well as nonfiction books about the invention of curiosities like bubble gum, traffic lights and the Super Soaker!
Stories with celebrate perseverance and innovation, large and small, make for great read alouds to support STEM education and growth mindset.
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Picture Books: Fiction
Be a Maker by Katey Howes, illustrated by Elizabet Vuković. A girl spends her day making all sorts of things. She makes everything from spaceship and drums, to friends and community donations. She uses her imagination and creativity to transform the everyday and share it with others. Absolutely delightful.
Rosie Revere, Engineer (series) by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts. Imaginative Rosie loves to tinker, build and invent. She gets discouraged when her inventions flop on the first try. Her wonderfully eccentric great-great-great aunt, however, explains to her that a flop is a successes because it paves the way for the next step in the inventive process.
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Violet the Pilot by Steve Breen. Violet Van Winkle is a mechanical genius. At the age of 2 she was fixing appliances, at the age of 8 she was inventing elaborate machines like the Tub-bubbler, a flying bathtub. She wants to win over her skeptical classmates and so builds a flying machine to enter into the Air Show. On the way to the show, Violet makes a decision that shows she is not just about engineering but she has a strong character as well.
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Papa's Mechanical Fish by Candace Fleming, illustrated by Boris Kulikov. Children observe their father inventing one "mechanical fish" after another. Determined to make a workable submarine, he tests each new invention out, adding improvements and starting over again. The narrator asks her father questions about fish, such as how they swim, how they see, etc. and each question inspires a new improvement of the machine.
Awesome Dawson by Chris Gall. Dawson is a kid who has been inventing things since birth. He upcycles everything he can get his hands on and has a secret workshop in the basement. One day he realizes he needs to invent something to do his chores for him or his mom's nagging will never stop interfering with his work! (It's always the mom, isn't it?) Thus, the Vacu-maniac is born. The Vacu-maniac gets a bit out of control, however, and Dawson must find a way to reign it in.
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If I Built a Car by Chris Van Dusen. Young Jack has grand ideas for his fantasy car and he relates them all in fast-paced rhyme. Would you like a car that has a built in swimming pool? One that drives itself without sacrificing safety? One that goes underwater? That flies? Well, Jack's car is made just for you.
How to Bicycle to the Moon to Plant Sunflowers: A Simple but Brilliant Plan in 24 Easy Steps by Mordicai Gerstein. Using a garden hose, a slingshot, a NASA spacesuit and lots of imagination, a boy lays out his plan to travel to the moon.... by bike. This is a very enjoyable book with a lot of humor and also a bit of magic with an ending that will bring a smile to your face.
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Galimoto by Karen Lynn Williams, illustrated by Catherine Stock. A galimoto is a push toy crafted out of found material. Kondi decides he wants to make a galimoto out of wire he's been saving up in his shoebox. Undeterred by his short supply he wanders around his village in search of more wire. I love how his determination to make a galimoto is also admired by the others he meets during his search and that despite a few obstacles he remains persistent.
Monkey with a Tool Belt (series) by Chris Monroe. Chico Bon Bon mad tinkering skills come in handy when he is captured by an organ grinder and hauled around town to a secret lair. Fortunately, the organ grinder failed to remove the monkey's tool belt and our hero is able to escape. This is a quirky story all around and Chico's impromptu escape mechanism had my boys giggling.
The Carpenter by Bruna Barros is a wordless board book that you can use to inspire kids in their toddler years on up. A boy becomes enraptured with the possibilities of a measuring tape and abandons electronic screens in order to create and construct. Marvelous.
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Coppernickel, The Invention by Wouter van Reek. Coppernickel the bird and Tungsten the dog decide to invent an elderberry-picking machine. Coppernickel draws a diagram of his invention which fills his work surface and starts to spill over until he is caught in his own invention! Tungsten's invention is a bit more sedate: a fork on a stick. This book was a bit of crazy, silly fun and my 8-year-old really liked pouring over the diagrams to see how the invention would work.
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The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires. Having a can-do attitude like the protagonist is a must for any person wanting to make make her mark in the world of science and technology. With the help of her assistant dog, a “regular girl” decides she is going to invent a most MAGNIFICENT thing. She has a lot of false starts. Nothing seems to be turning out the way she wants and it’s so frustrating for her! However, she takes a walk, comes back and looks at her inventions afresh, and finally figures things out.
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Crafty Chloe by Kelly DiPucchio, illustrated by Heather Ross. Inventions don't always have to involve science and physics. Sometimes tinkering involves a lot of glitter and a glue gun. Chloe learns about the creative engineering of crafting when she decides to make a gift for a friend.
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The Dumpster Diver by Janet S. Wong, illustrated by David Roberts. While you may decide to discourage your child from actually digging through a dumpster, you will certainly inspire them to create imaginative inventions if you read them this book about Steve and his neighborhood pals who find trash to convert into treasure at the local dumpster.
Nonfiction and Biographies
Pop!: The Invention of Bubble Gum by Meghan McCarthy. This is a fun look at how bubble gum was invented by Walter Diemer, an accountant who worked at a candy factory. Colorful illustrations move the story along and kids will feel the thrill of finally succeeding after working towards a goal.
The Girl Who Thought in Pictures: The Story of Dr. Temple Grandin by Julia Finley Mosca. A lovely book written in rhyme about how Grandin's differences are actually her strengths. When traditional education cannot adapt to Grandin, she finds her place on a farm where her inventions help build better farms and improve the lives of animals.
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The Hole Story of the Doughnut by Pat Miller, illustrated by Vincent X. Kirsch. Who doesn't love doughnuts? And have you ever wondered why they have that curious hole, I mean who would take away part of that deliciousness? Well now you can find out by reading about how sailor Hanson Crockett Gregory determined the hole is a necessary ingredient!
Whoosh!: Lonnie Johnson's Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions by Chris Barton. Kids will love to learn how their favorite Super-Soaker toy was invented! The may also be surprised it was invented by a man who had a career at NASA.
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Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight Became an Inventor by Emily Arnold McCully. Mattie, the first U.S. woman to obtain a patent, started inventing things when she was just a girl. She figured out how to make faster sleds, better kites and when she was twelve, she invented a device to protect loom workers. She also invented a machine to manufacture paper bags. Flowing watercolor illustrations are accompanied by blueprint like drawings of Mattie's inventions.
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Saving the Day by Karyn Parsons, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. As a boy growing up in a farming family, Garret Morgan was eager to help, but he wasn't always adept at farm work. However, he loved to dream. His parents encouraged him to move to the city to study, where he nurtured his interest in tinkering and fixing things. After witnessing a collision between an auto and a horse and wagon, he came up with the idea for a traffic signal. Bright and bold illustrations accompany a rhyming text, making this a great read aloud.
Mr. Ferris and His Wheel by Kathryn Gibbs Davis, illustrated by Gilbert Ford. This is a fascinating look at how an engineer defied gravity to create the iconic Ferris Wheel. The illustrations are simply fantastic and the text effectively combines a compelling and rather suspenseful narrative with historical facts about the invention.
MORE: See all our nonfiction book lists!
Six Dots: A Story of Young Louis Braille by Jen Bryant, illustrated by Boris Kulikov. Inventions are not always about mixing concoctions in a lab. This is the interesting story, written in first-person narrative, that looks at Braille's childhood, how he lost his sight, and how he invented a reading system for the blind.
The House That Cleaned Itself: The True Story of Frances Gabe's (Mostly) Marvelous Invention by Laura Dershewitz and Susan Romberg, illustrated by Meghann Rader. The number one reason to read this book to your kids is that no doubt they will want to try out Frances Gabe's ideas for themselves. Although, beware when your child starts hooking up a soap-spraying sprinkler in the ceiling. The number two reason is because this biography is a wonderfully joyful and humorous look at one woman's boundless imagination and her quest to invent tools to make life easier. Don't miss this one.
The Boo-Boos that Changed the World by Barry Wittenstein, illustrated by Chris Hsu. What do you do when your wife keeps injuring herself? Well, you work on figuring out an easy way for her to bandage her wounds, of course! I've always found it cute that kids have a love affair with band-aids, and they will enjoy this story in which the Boy Scouts of America play a crucial role!
Nacho's Nachos: The Story Behind the World's Favorite Snack by Sandra Nickel, illustrated by Oliver Dominguez. Inventions can also be made out of food! In our home, we love nachos. Nachos for lunch, nachos for snacks, nachos for dinner. The only nachos we don't like are those gross ones you get at ball parks with the plastic, shiny cheese on top. Here's the fascinating story of how nachos were invented in the mid 20th century in a restaurant just over the border by a gentleman named–yes–Nacho.
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The Fabulous Flying Machines of Alberto Santos-Dumont by Victoria Griffith. You may have heard of the Wright brothers, but do you know about Alberto Santos-Dumon? He was a Brazilian inventor who flew his own self-propelled plane over Paris.
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