The Questioneers
An ambitious and delightful series
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This week, we’re doing a series that takes on incredibly ambitious tasks and delivers on them every time. It’s time for…
The Series: The Questioneers
The Author: Andrea Beaty
The Illustrator: David Roberts
Length/Picture Density: 120ish, pictures every two or three pages (plus little educational sections at the back of the books)
What lessons and examples do you want kids to hear? What histories should they learn about? What are the things you find yourself saying ‘they should teach this in school!’ about?
There are the big, well-trodden answers to these questions that are hit on by the bulk of children’s books: be kind, work together, getting better at things takes time, etc.
The Questioneers series takes on these questions in an earnest, nuanced, and largely successful way.
Let’s start with the main characters, four kids who are each an expert at one topic. We have Rosie Revere the engineer, Ada Twist the scientist, Iggy Peck the architect, and Sofia Valdez, whose specialty is politics and democracy.
Through their stories, we learn about each of those topics, but we also get into pockets of history that kids don’t necessarily hear about, like the riveters for whom Rosie is named after, and labor organizing among Hispanic farm workers. Ada’s brother is essentially a tribute to tennis legend and activist Arthur Ashe (the book doesn’t actually get into his activism). The Sofia book even mentions the 2018 Virginia State Senate election – not by name, but it does mention how control of a state senate was decided by a coin flip (I started and erased a parenthetical about the state of U.S. democracy, because we’re reviewing chapter books here, not screaming into the void).
These books also show diversity in a way I found to be a stronger effort than most: Ada is Black and Sofia is Hispanic, but we also have a disabled character in Sofia’s book. I’m not sure if there is a backstory I missed about Sofia’s parents, but her grandfather seems to be her main parental figure. In the show (mentioned below), Iggy’s parents are divorced. It’s refreshing to see different family situations represented, especially because kids will have friends and classmates in those situations before too long.
All that is woven into no-bad-guy plots based around local events like the fate of a historic building or the quest to rescue someone who is flying away on the strength of his inflatable pants. Because yes, these books aren’t just full of information, they are also wacky and whimsical, with many charming and batty small-town characters.
It’s all delightful and really well executed. My only complaint is that the books are so stuffed with characters and teachings that they can get hard to keep track of. When reading these to Leo, I would occasionally lose my grip on the side characters and how they fit into the plot.
That said, when these get convoluted, it generally doesn’t distract from the core characters and plot. You can drop details here and there and still know what’s going on.
Like the Mercy Watson series, each character also has a corresponding picture book, which rhyme their way through shorter, simpler plots with the same basic values. Those are fun and a good way to introduce the characters.
As for which Questioneers book to start with, it doesn’t really matter. The plots don’t relate to one another, and they’re roughly equal in terms of how easy they are to follow. Every time I think of one that I think works as a good intro story, I think of a section that might be a little challenging (“the Iggy one is pretty fun and straightforward…except the many asides into architectural styles. The Sofia one centers around a vote on a class pet, that’s easy to get…though it also has a lot about voting, and that charming but random part about the animals at the library…”).
These books require a fair amount of focus and some occasional explanations to fully get, but they are easy to enjoy even if your kid is not fully taking in the battle between historical preservation and new development in Iggy or the discussion of air pressure in Ada.
We did these when Leo was five and six, but I’m hoping he comes back to them when he’s older and can layer in a deeper understanding of what they are trying to communicate.
There is also a Netflix series called Ada Twist, Scientist. I have limited exposure to it, but it seems fun and thoughtful. It’s a cartoon, but it often has a short, live action section at the end profiling a real scientist working today.
Oh, and there are activity books! I haven’t tried them, but there is one that corresponds to each of the four characters.
Thanks for reading! Till next week-