Kickstarter Campaign For 'Detective Dot' Book Hopes To Break Down STEM Stereotypes For Kids

'Detective Dot' Kids Book Hopes To Break Down STEM Stereotypes

A small startup is hoping to break down the stereotypes of children, especially girls, not enjoying science, technology and engineering by crowdfunding for a new series of books.

Bright Little Labs wants to encourage kids to get excited by learning coding skills through the book series titled 'Detective Dot'.

They're hoping to raise £12,500 on Kickstarter which will enable them to make the books - both in print and digital editions - aimed at seven to nine year olds.

Sophie Deen, who founded Bright Little Labs, wrote: "Kids media is heavily stereotyped. Children, particularly girls and minorities, need positive role models in engineering, science, technology, arts and maths.

"In kids cartoons, 0% of princesses are engineers, 2.9% of characters are black, and Batman doesn’t recycle."

Detective Dot hopes to bring a positive role model in STEM to children

Deen said the Detective Dot stories are based around a cheeky, eight-year-old coder called Dot with special powers.

Dot and her friend Tumble travel the world to find out how objects including memory chips and footballs are made, using technology to solve global problems.

Deen said the series will also be available for schools. She hopes to produce a pack full of teaching resources and lesson plans.

She added: "We need strong female characters like Dot to encourage young girls early to get into STEM and coding, and to make the whole space more accessible to children and parents too."

The Kickstarter campaign ends on 7 January 2016. The project has raised £8,769 with 159 backers at the time of writing.

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