Astrophysicist releases kids book Under the Stars: Astrophysics for Bedtime to inspire a passion for STEM

Now there's a book that offers some answers. Astrophysicist and Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) ambassador Lisa Harvey-Smith was at Questacon on Wednesday ahead of the launch of her new children's book Under the Stars: Astrophysics for Bedtime on October 1.

"I've been working with kids in schools for years now and just going into schools and talking about astronomy and kids love it. They're excited and they do Q&As and they ask the most fantastic questions," Dr Harvey-Smith said.

"Their imaginations run wild and it's wonderful to see that imagination and to be able to answer some questions and to be able to feed that [imagination].

"I drew inspiration from these fantastic questions that kids ask and just the things that really make me think 'wow' and that's what it's all about - getting kids and grown-ups to talk about astronomy together. Who knows where that can lead them?"

Dr Harvey-Smith wanted kids to be able to see themselves having a future working in STEM, and in particular, astronomy, which is why the book's illustrations - done by Victorian illustrator Mel Matthews - are so diverse. And as a big advocate for increasing the number of women working in STEM industries, she made sure the cover image was of a young girl.

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"It's very deliberate that there are lots of different kids in the pictures so everyone can see someone kind of like them," she said.

"We don't have nearly enough engineers in this country and people going into IT and technical trades and we train a lot of scientists but very few women scientists in many physical sciences like astronomy and physics. So trying to fix this there is young girl on the front cover and it's trying to be a book that really appeals to girls as well as boys.

"Often when I do book signings a lot of people say it's for their son or for their grandson, and I think that's lovely but not as many people say that they're buying this for their daughter or their granddaughter or niece."

Dr Harvey-Smith said it was important to get children interested in science and math at a young age, particularly if there was to be an increase of women in STEM careers. She said by year six children had already made decisions on what career paths they wanted to follow, so the early years were crucial in sparking an interest in science.

"I went to a school in Western Australia recently and we were doing a presentation about space and the stars, and science and engineering," Dr Harvey-Smith said.

"At the end, this boy shouted out 'girls can't look through telescopes'. I mean this is 2019 and an astrophysicist has just done a presentation about space and talked about the telescopes that are used and kids still hold this belief really young.

"It's trying to correct those misconceptions that kids have. And if that boy was thinking it, who knows what the girls were thinking."