Laurie Wallmark: STEM Books for Kids

Episode Summary

Laurie Wallmark is a pioneer – one of the first women at Princeton, a software engineer, a computer science professor, an entrepreneur who created an online bookstore before Amazon ever did, and now, an award-winning writer of picture book biographies of women in STEM, for kids. Passionate about science, writing, teaching, and learning, Laurie shares her story, on this episode of The Sydcast.

Sydney Finkelstein 

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.

Laurie Wallmark 

Award-winning author Laurie Wallmark writes picture book biographies of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) as well as fiction. Her books have earned five starred trade reviews, been chosen as Junior Library Guild Selections, and received awards such as Outstanding Science Trade Book, Best STEM Book, Cook Prize Honor Book, Crystal Kite Award, Mathical Honor Book, and Parents’ Choice Gold Medal. Her titles include Ada Byron Lovelace and the Thinking Machine, Grace Hopper: Queen of Computer Code, Hedy Lamarr’s Double Life, Numbers In Motion, Code Breaker, Spy Hunter, and her debut fiction picture book, Dino Pajama Party. Laurie has an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a former software engineer and computer science professor. 

Insights from this episode: 

• How Laurie ended up writing books
• Laurie’s supportive parents while pursuing STEM courses
• Teaching kids about failure
• Insights on Laurie being an outlier 
• What it feels like to represent a minority group
• Building her own company
• Insights into Laurie’s e-commerce business
• Insights into illustrations in books
• What makes a successful picture book
• Lessons she has learned from being a children’s book author

Quotes from the show:

• “The key to writing is rewriting and editing” —Syd Finkelstein [6:15]
• “When you first start writing like that and you are not coming from this whole background where you’ve been writing all your life, you don’t tell people because what if it doesn’t sell? what if it’s no good?” —Laurie Wallmark [9:59]
• “One of the things that we are trying to show kids, especially in the sciences, is that failure is a part of the process. Th