After WSU Tech President Sheree Utash took her granddaughter, Ella, to the movie “Lightyear,” Utash asked who her favorite character was. When Ella said Buzz Lightyear, Utash asked if she would like to be an astronaut. Ella responded that girls couldn’t be astronauts.
“The thing that we really had to figure out is, how do we get to those young kids, 4 to 9 years old, interested, and writing books seemed to be the answer,” Utash said.
That’s when Utash partnered with Mandy Fouse, executive director of public affairs and communications at WSU Tech, to create “Tech Tykes,” a series of three books focused on getting all children interested in science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics, or STEAM.
“One thing is that kids recognize themselves in the characters, even if it’s not the way they look, but that, I’m interested in this too,” Fouse said. “So they see themselves, and they’re able to relate it to then taking it on to a career, or just even just honoring the interests that they have.”
The trilogy of illustrated children’s books currently stars Ella the Engineer, who loves to build with LEGOs and with her parents on DIY projects, Paisley the Pilot, who stands up to bullies and loves to learn about flying and airplanes, and Beckham the Biologist, who hikes with his family and picks up litter to help the environment.
“Tech Tykes” is personal to both Utash and Fouse. Each character is named after one of their children or grandchildren, and the books take place mostly in Wichita. They wrote these books with a desire to show kids what they could do with STEAM.
“It is just igniting the spark of curiosity and exploration and being inquisitive about what a STEAM career could be,” Utash said.
The official launch for “Tech Tykes” was hosted at Exploration Place on Saturday.
Hosting the event was Roy “Mr. Roy” Moye III, aerospace engineer and founder of STEMusic LLC. Alongside asking insightful questions, Moye got the children in the audience up and moving with his songs about science and math.
Currently, “Tech Tykes” is a trilogy with activity sets that go along with the books, but there are plans to finish the series with 10 books, encapsulating all aspects of STEAM. The next book will focus on data analytics with Grayson the Data Analyst.
“We want to just say, keep learning, keep learning, keep learning,” Utash said. “And keep reading, keep reading, keep reading.”
Utash and Fouse also plan to do a reading event of their current and future books at Town East Square every Tuesday in July. Information about that and future events can be found on the Tech Tykes’ Facebook page.
“All we’re trying to do is spark curiosity in kids, and no child can know what they want to do if they don’t have any frame of reference for it,” Utash said. “What we really want to do is just ignite that curiosity and that feel of exploration.”
