A really terrific book that is a collection of essays written by MIT students and by practicing scientists about childhood experiences with objects that eventually led them to study science,engineering, and design. The objects were as diverse as mud puddles, cardboard boxes, vacuum tubes and LEGO blocks but they all led to exploring how and why things work the way they do. An important point is that these children really fell in love with their particular object and immersed themselves in the world of that object with experimenting and pondering the results of those experiments. An important book for those who want to understand how true scientists think and even more so for those who have small children. Highly recommended but best read in small doses..

The good things about this book: Sherry Turkle writes excellent bookends to this book, persuading us to encourage bright children when they become interested in playing with various objects. She also includes classics from those who are well established in the scientific community. The bibliography is also very stimulating.

The bad: Reading these essays becomes tedious, as they sound like the school assignments that they are. Yes, some of them are very good (I quite like Selby Cull's "Chocolate Meringue") but there's quite a lot of "I liked to spend hours with my legos/computer." We would've gotten the point very well in a book a third this length and not been as bored with it.

I recommend sampling this book, but not trying to read it per se. Open it, see what jumps out at you, and then return it to the library. The lesson is more important than the text in this case. ( )

It's now available as an ebook on the MIT press portal http://mitpress-ebooks.mit.edu/product/falling-for-science