When I Grow Up
A young person’s guide to interesting and unusual occupations
By Jessica Loy
Henry Holt and Company, 2008
ISBN #978-0-8050-7717-9
Nonfiction
Grades 3-6
Entomologist, alpaca farmer, kite designer, or chocolatier: what do you want to be when you grow up? Fourteen occupations that grew from a passion make up this book of real people, their jobs, and images illustrating a variety of aspects of each one. Readers can use the jobs as a jumping off point to explore their own passions as they begin to examine career choices for their futures. The breadth and scope of these choices lets the readers see there are jobs that will take them in an off-the-beaten path direction and encourage them to look beyond more familiar jobs.
Activity 1
After reading the book, examine some of the careers in more detail. Look up further information and identify how science might play a part in each of these careers.
Activity 2
Look up these science careers and see what you’d be doing in animal behavior, astrobiology, or pyrotechnics, and what a virus hunter and volcanologist might do. Would these careers interest anyone you know?
National Science Standards: understanding about science and technology; science as a human endeavor; nature of scientific knowledge
Look for more about unusual science careers with this set of books:
Weird Careers In Science by Kay Frydenborg, Mary Firestone, and Richard Emmer
Posted by slduke 