Alumna's Book Focuses on Girls and Science--and a Robot

Eve Ewing, MAT '09 and an author, poet, playwright and former public school science teacher, has written a new book, "Maya and the Robot." The illustrated novel for young readers features a young Chicago girl with a love of science and a homemade robot who comes to life just when she needs a friend and a subject for a science fair project. 

"The books that we read as young people stick with us and inspire us for the rest of our lives," Ewing said in a Chicago Tribune article. "As a former public school teacher and an avid reader myself, children's literature is very important to me."

Ewing, who is an assistant professor at the Crown Family School of Social Work at the University of Chicago, is passionate about science. "There's quite a bit of real science in the book and I hope that science teachers and language arts teachers will see opportunities to collaborate and see tat Maya models the research and inquiry process; she explains certain things to her friends; there is some real content about machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, as well as some fun science stuff." 

You can read the entire article here. 

Photo by Antonio Perez of the Chicago Tribune.