Getting girls excited by STEAM projects is incredibly popular right now. So we were very excited when the GoldieBlox team came out with their first chapter book for young girls this past May. I immediately purchased the first one for my daughter and she loved it. While she is a complete fashionista, E is also my child who likes to think outside of the box and create things, so I think she relates to Goldie.
The series focuses on Goldie and a group of her friends. In the first book, Goldie Blox Ruins Rules the School, Goldie has to go to a regular, though private school for the first time after blowing the roof off of the small home-style school her mother runs. When she arrives there, even though her neighbor and best friend is there with her, she knows she doesn’t fit in. Higgs Bozon Prep is complete with rigid rules and conventional conformity which don’t work well for someone like Goldie who laughs in the face of rules and has unique was at solving problems. She rounds up a group of allies who want her out of the school and winds up making some new friends and learning about teamwork.
Book two, Goldie Blox and the Three Dares, brings the group back together when Goldie finds her late grandmother’s book of dares. Her grandmother had finished all but 3 of the dares and now Goldie is determined to finish them before what would have been her grandmother’s 77th birthday – in 3 days! The Gearheads use a great deal of problem solving to solve the problems. The final dare really tests their abilities and creativity – having a picnic on the moon.
Book three, Goldie Blox and the Best! Pet! Ever!, focuses on Goldie’s beloved dog Nacho. Goldie enters him in a pet talent show contest with a great deal of confidence that he can win. But Nacho isn’t perfect. He doesn’t sit or shake. Instead, he farts and chases his tail. And the competition heats up when Goldie’s rival Zeek brags that he can beat Nacho with an expensive robot dog that obeys every command. Zeek thinks he can buy his way to the top, but Goldie is determined to prove him wrong.
These are great for young girls age 6-9. They are definitely silly and rather formulaic, but that is appealing at a younger age when reading books like this on your own is still new. At 128 pages, they are a bit more challenging for readers who need more. The concept behind these books isn’t the science itself, but rather, learning that it is okay to be different, that’s it is great to be smart (for all of the Gearheads have their own talents), and how important teamwork is.
An article on the book series appeared on Bustle.com and I loved the reasoning behind the books. According to the article, the CEO of GoldieBlox, Debbie Sterling, explained that the idea for turning Goldie Blox into a book character came from a conversation with an eight-year-old girl, who told Sterling that her favorite toy was actually a book. From then, Sterling started to consider how books “provide a level of depth, story, and character development that can really spark readers’ imaginations.”
This truly resonated with me because both of my girls are such avid readers. I actually was one of the early kickstarter backers of GoldieBlox when they were introducing their toy line in 2012. Neither of my girls really enjoyed it and I never looked into the other sets. But E loves to create things out of our recycling and also adores books. She saw the t-shirt that GoldieBlox sells which says “More Than Just A Princess,” and HAD to have it. Once it arrived, she wore it multiple days in a row, including the need to wear it to the first day back to school after break.
I’m always looking for ways to inspire my kids to be all that they can be and have already pre-ordered book 4, Goldie Blox and the Best Friend Fail!, which comes out later this month. I think this book series does just that for younger girls. Someday, they are going to rule the world.
