Zoey and Sassafras
Mythical creatures meet the scientific method
Hey all, it’s your Wednesdaily Snarf. This one is about a series I really love, and can recommend without any reservations.
As always, sharing this with anyone who might get something out of it (and don’t be shy about dropping this in school message boards and the like). You can just forward this email or send along this subscription link.
Now on to…
The Series: Zoey and Sassafras
The Author: Asia Citro
The Illustrator: Marion Lindsay
Length/Picture Density: 100ish pages, pictures on most spreads
The Premise: A girl (Zoey) and her scientist mom can see magical creatures, many of which live in the forest by their house. In each book, a magical creature has a problem, and Zoey and her mom use scientific methods to figure out the issue and solve it.
The dad can’t see the magic creatures and there is some comedy around keeping things secret (he’s nice, it would just be too hard to explain, I suppose). Sassafras is Zoey’s cat. He usually doesn’t factor heavily into the plot, he, like most cats, mostly just provides companionship and some comic relief.
The Review: There is no shortage of content these days encouraging kids to be scientists, think like scientists, etc., and that’s great, but what is science? Technology stuff? Learning about nature and space? Whatever people in lab coats do?
These books have, I think a more satisfying answer: science is doing experiments according to the scientific method. So much of what gets labeled “science” seems like magic, or at least knowledge and capabilities far beyond those of normal people. I for instance, have very little understanding of what’s happening inside the computer I’m writing on or what exactly is happening when Substack zaps it over to your inboxes, or how people predict the weather, etc. I mean sure, I can throw out some general terms and talk generally about how various concepts go together, but go a layer deeper and it’s all mysterious.
So much of science-related fiction uses that mysteriousness to jump from “science” to “device that some smart person made that happens to do whatever the plot needs it to.”
Zoey and Sassafras manages to be about the first principles of science by applying them to magical creatures.
It’s a delightfully clever move. After all, if you’re sick, you don’t do a series of controlled experiments, you lean on the last 2,000 years of research to diagnose yourself and a capitalistic system which — say what you will about it — is very good at making sure over-the-counter drugs are incredibly accessible.
But what do you do if a hippogriff is sick? Or the caterfly population is in trouble? Now you have to go back to observations and controlled trials.
Zoey’s mom helps, but it’s largely Zoey designing and running the experiments. As you probably learned to do in a middle school science class, she writes out her hypothesis, materials, procedure, and findings.
The presence of magical creatures make the stories fun and exciting, their problems that Zoey has to solve create tension, and the increasingly high stakes of the experiments build tension.
The word “wholesome” can have some quaint, Leave-it-to-Beaver connotations, but these books are wholesome for these times: they teach important, enduring principles, the (non-white) family is supportive and loving, there are no bad guys, and, perhaps most importantly, they never get it right on the first try. Experiments and life usually don’t go right the first time, and so much of learning, making things work, parenting, is iterating and hoping for better results on attempts two through 100.
The writing is fluid, descriptive without being distracting, and laces in a few science vocab words that pop up again in a glossary at the back. The quality and style is very consistent across books, so if you like one, you’ll probably like all of them. It also doesn’t really matter what order you do them in, though you do get to see her discover the secret of the magical creatures in the first one, Dragons and Marshmallows.
This is an excellent, whimsical, heartwarming series that captures the imagination while teaching kids more than they realize. No snark in this one, just a hearty recommendation.
Oh, and the author also has an activity book with experiments that mirror some of the ones that Zoey does. I haven’t read or used it myself, but a trusted friend says it’s good (which is great because kids activity books are a real mixed bag).