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Experience the world of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math through the eyes of a fictional teenage friend.

Through these stories, we have an opportunity to influence the life of a middle grade child (ages 10 and up) in a way that could completely reshape their destiny. How, you ask? The mission of these books is to expose the young reader to the world of S.T.E.M. in a way that is fun, meaningful, and relevant to their lives. For some who read these stories, their world will blossom with new possibilities for study, work, career, and personal calling.

Enter Lola’s world, where she learns about the natural world of creation around her while discovering who she is as a person. Her many adventures take her to places and situations where she’s forced to use curiosity, smarts, and science or math to solve mysteries or help people in need.

Don’t let Lola’s exciting adventures end with you! Talk about this book series and website to parent(s) or guardian(s) of children in middle-school and early high-school (ages 10 to 18).

This book series for teens and tweens is designed to raise awareness of the physical and chemical world around them, and the direct connections they have to it. Presented in a fictional story format, concepts that seem boring and irrelevant to young readers are presented in the familiar context of a fictional teenager’s life. More topics and themes can be presented in this format than there are elements in the periodic table!

The book series isn’t a replacement for traditional science/math textbooks. Rather, it’s a fun and engaging complement to traditional learning experiences. Its purpose is to remove the ‘mystery’ of science and math from two groups of students. Those in the first group have accepted the subconscious message that they are disqualified to excel or even participate in S.T.E.M. careers. Girls and underrepresented youth often fall into this first group. Those in the second group have been introduced to S.T.E.M. subjects through traditional methods but are (for various reasons) turned-off from exploring or considering them further. A young person’s journey of opportunity begins with being introduced and exposed to new concepts, ideas, and information. This book series does that with the world of science and math by presenting them in an attractive and compelling way. Raising students’ awareness of science and math can expand their vision of what their future could be.

My Story – A.M. Gonzalez

So exactly how did this book series come to be?

It started on Christmas of 1976…

I was in my first year in middle school. I don’t know what prompted my parents with the idea, but among my Christmas gifts that year was a chemistry set. It was one of the old kinds…designed and sold to the public before health and safety concerns were invented. I don’t recall there being goggles or gloves in the kit. The instructions might have mentioned warnings to use only with the supervision of an adult, but my parents not being scientists or engineers, might not have thought about that aspect of the gift.

I do remember sitting at our patio table behind our house in Ontario, California. Dad was with me when we unwrapped it for the first time. If I were to embellish the event into a fictional version, here is where I’d insert the appearance of angelic heavenly hosts and bright rays of white light gloriously shining down on me and the kit! I immediately fell in love. I was captivated by the idea that I could cause chemical reactions to occur in a controlled way. I could predict what might happen in a test tube, try it, and see if I was right! I could follow a recipe or tweak it and get a reaction that I intended. Or I could take something unknown (usually rocks and minerals in those early years…), investigate it with chemical tests, and learn something about it that I didn’t know before! From that instant, I was hooked on science! I knew chemistry was going to be in my future in some form.

I’ll never know what path my life might have taken without that old chemistry set. I won’t get a Clarence the Angel to guide me through an alternate reality, like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. [Not sure I’d want to, if offered the chance, now that I think about it.] I might have eventually learned my life’s calling, but maybe not until late high school or early college. Maybe after some false starts or taking well-meaning but misdirected advice. I do know that having that early start on my true path gave me two things I desperately needed as a late middle school, early high school, student: confidence. I had a focus to hang my energies on, and I had the seeds of an identity that was fairly unique among my peers. My high school career was fairly sheltered by following the gifted and talented education track with a small group of ~20 similarly blessed students. But I was the only one who dazzled my junior-year high school chemistry teacher with my 100 pages of experiment notes and reports that I’d generated all through middle school and early high school! His exact words (…if I recall) were: “No one does things like this any more! Wow!”

The following story gives a hint of where my life’s trajectory might have led. I went to Chaffee (pronounced chay-fee) H.S. in Ontario, CA. At the time, that part of San Bernardino County was not as populated as it is today. Our city and one or two just east of it were essentially the eastern edge of the Los Angeles “sprawl” for which it’s famous. Because of that, all students from the middle and intermediate schools in the large area around it fed into Chaffee H.S. During my four years there, the total student population was up in the several thousands! My senior class was about 550. But I, being an insecure, quiet, passive, compliant young person, never thought about asking for help or guidance about what to do after graduation. Based solely on my home experience, I assumed (as my dad and uncles had done…) I would go to the local community college. Then, another significant “plot-point” in my life’s story occurred. Mr. Dennis Ruiz, a student guidance counselor (I finally found his name in my senior year book) called me into the office one afternoon in the fall of my senior year. Of course I assumed I was in trouble, which I never had been before. But Mr. Ruiz simply wanted to learn what my plans were for after graduation. I shrugged my shoulders and with a 17-year-old vocabulary basically explained what I just explained to you above.

I remember him staring at me for a moment, his eyebrows scrunched together. Then he said “Are you kidding? You’re ranked number 1 in your graduating class! Why are you going to community college??” As another indication of my ignorance and naiveté at the time, I remember thinking what’s a class rank? I didn’t pay much attention to my GPA. He continued, “You can go to any college you want!” Then I revealed more of my sheltered ignorance by telling him my parents can’t afford anything other than community college. From that point on, my guidance counselor took the reins of my future. He introduced me to something called scholarships and state/federal grants, and laid out dozens of college/university brochures from the likes of Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Harvey Mudd, Pomona College, etc. So, next to Christmas 1976, that day was the second significant turning point in my life’s path. I ended up staying local to Mom and Dad and went to Pomona College, a fine four-year liberal arts college. However, that was after getting acceptance letters from Cal-Tech, Harvey Mudd Engineering College, and Princeton University! Again, my insecurity and ignorance prevented me from making a choice for my good.

My mission for some time has been to do something to have young teens suffer from ignorance and insecurity as I almost did. If I can introduce them to a world they’d never get to see otherwise, and if some take a step and make choices to better themselves based on what advice or guidance I have provided, I’ll consider my life as being a success!!!