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    Ellie, Engineer
    Ellie, Engineer
    Ellie, Engineer
    Ebook114 pages1 hour

    Ellie, Engineer

    By Jackson Pearce

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    "Look out, Junie B. Jones! Ellie the engineer is thinking, making, creating, and showing enthusiasm and brilliance with her creations!" -School Library Connection

    A charming, hilarious illustrated middle grade about a girl who is an engineer--no, not the kind on a train, the kind that builds things! Perfect creative, STEM-powered fun for girls who have interests in how things work.

    Ellie is an engineer. With a tool belt strapped over her favorite skirt (who says you can't wear a dress and have two kinds of screwdrivers handy, just in case?), she invents and builds amazing creations in her backyard workshop. Together with her best friend Kit, Ellie can make anything. As Kit's birthday nears, Ellie doesn't know what gift to make until the girls overhear Kit's mom talking about her present--the dog Kit always wanted! Ellie plans to make an amazing doghouse, but her plans grow so elaborate that she has to enlist help from the neighbor boys and crafty girls, even though the two groups don't get along. Will Ellie be able to pull off her biggest project yet, all while keeping a secret from Kit?

    Illustrated with Ellie's sketches and plans, and including backmatter with a fun how-to guide to tools, this is a STEM- and friendship-powered story full of fun!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateJan 16, 2018
    ISBN9781681195209
    Ellie, Engineer
    Author

    Jackson Pearce

    If Jackson Pearce had three wishes, she would wish for wisdom, patience, and for life to be a little more like a musical. She began writing when the school librarian told her there weren't any books that contained a smart girl, horses, baby animals, and magic. Her solution was to write the book herself. Jackson currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with a slightly cross-eyed cat and a lot of secondhand furniture.

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    Reviews for Ellie, Engineer

    4.5/5

    9 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Ellie is a smart, young girl who likes "boy stuff" and "girl stuff". She likes to build and create things, play soccer, get dirty, wear pretty skirts (with her tool belt, of course), and have tea parties with her best friend, Kit. Ellie has a notebook where she keeps track of all her projects including the water balloon launcher (which was a hit) and the French Braider (which was not a hit). Ellie likes to draw out her ideas first in her notepad and use materials found in her workshop or parents' garage (of course, always getting permission first). Her workshop is part of her swingset and holds all her favorite tools.Ellie and Kit are excited about Kit's upcoming birthday tea party when they overhear (thanks to one of Ellie's contraptions) about Kit's present. That gives Ellie the perfect gift idea. But, she isn't sure she can pull it off by herself and keep it a secret from Kit at the same time. She enlists some help from some friends but the secrets get to be too much and instead of having fun, everyone gets mad. The day of the party arrives and Ellie decides to ask for everyone's forgiveness and to pitch in to finish the project.I absolutely love this creative and fun story of Ellie and her friends. She is a bright girl with lots of ideas and will be inspiring to girls to create their own ideas. She teaches that it is ok to be friends with boys and girls and like all kinds of things. There are drawing in the book of Ellie's ideas and both in the beginning stages and finished. Ellie has some misses and that is important for kids to realize it is okay to make mistakes and keep trying.This chapter book is the perfect level for middle-grade readers. There are lots of little problems to solve and silly things that happen to keep kids interested. There are also friendship dilemmas that offer lessons for kids when dealing with their own issues. I think Pearce has created a wonderful concept for a series and it is one I could see girls and boys enjoying!
    • 5/5
      Ellie loves to solve problems by building solutions. For instance, when the neighborhood boys won’t let Ellie and her friend Kit join in their soccer game, she designs and builds a water balloon launcher and soaks them! When she hears that Kit’s mom is going to get Kit a dog for her birthday she decides to build her a dog house for her birthday present. It’s going to be her biggest project yet and will require help from a lot of other kids. Can she keep this project a secret from her very best friend until Kit’s birthday party?This book incorporated a STEM aspect into it without hitting the reader over the head with it or getting too technical for the intended age group – two through fourth grade. Ellie loves projects but she’s a well-rounded kid with tons of personality. She likes tea parties too. I liked that before she started a project, she sketched it out and that the sketch was included in the book. That’s really helpful for readers like me that have trouble picturing those types of things in their heads. I’ve never seen a home-made French braider before! There is also a handy dandy illustrated glossary of tools at the end. I think this book will appeal to girls and boys alike, no matter how handy they themselves actually are. It’s a great story that shows that girls can be into more than just dolls and tea parties. Highly recommended.

    Book preview

    Ellie, Engineer - Jackson Pearce

    Also by Jackson Pearce

    The Doublecross

    The Inside Job

    For my dad

    (he’s the best)

    Contents

    Chapter One

    Chapter Two

    Chapter Three

    Chapter Four

    Chapter Five

    Chapter Six

    Chapter Seven

    Chapter Eight

    Chapter Nine

    Chapter Ten

    Chapter Eleven

    Chapter Twelve

    Chapter Thirteen

    Chapter Fourteen

    Chapter Fifteen

    Chapter Sixteen

    Ellie’s Very Favorite Tools

    Ellie Bell was in her workshop.

    Technically, it was a playhouse, because it was the little covered bit on her playset. But this was where Ellie worked, so that made it a workshop, if you asked her. And today, Ellie had a lot of work to do.

    Ellie rattled her fingers inside one of the peanut butter jars full of screws and nuts and bolts until she found what she was searching for—two slightly rusty bolts about the size of her dad’s thumbnail. She looked out the window of the workshop. From this high, she could see over the fence and a few backyards over, to where the neighborhood boys were playing soccer. There was Dylan, who had giant feet, and the McClellan twins, who weren’t allowed to eat any junk food (like none), and Toby Michaels. Toby Michaels was the worst. He was the bossiest kid Ellie knew, and she was in Mrs. Funderburk’s third-grade class, so that was really saying something. That morning, when Ellie wanted to play soccer with them, the boys told her, No, this is a boys’ team.

    (Which was really dumb since it wasn’t a team at all, just a bunch of people in the neighborhood playing soccer, and also Ellie was a really good goalie.)

    (And now that she was remembering the whole thing, Ellie was getting mad all over again.)

    Do you have the bolts? a voice called out from down below. It was the sort of voice you might expect to hear on television, coming out of a cartoon deer or bunny or talking piece of cake.

    Yep! Ellie called back, and stuck the two bolts between her lips so her hands were free. She ducked out the door, grabbed hold of the fireman’s pole just outside it, and slid down to the ground, sneakers hitting the wood chips with a nice thud-crunch.

    Great! What now? the talking piece of cake said. Only it wasn’t a talking piece of cake—it was Kit, Ellie’s next-door neighbor, best friend, and future vice president of the engineering company Ellie was going to run one day. (They’d considered being co-presidents, but then Kit decided she really liked being able to call herself VP.) (VP stands for vice president.)

    Ellie and Kit were a lot alike. They even had a lot of the same clothes, and they wore them at the same time whenever they could. Today, they were both wearing skirts—but Ellie’s was fluffy and purple, and Kit’s was smooth and pink. Ellie also had her tool belt strapped snugly around her waist, over her skirt. In it were her most useful tools: a hammer, two screwdrivers, a tape measure, an adjustable wrench, her mini cordless drill (it was an extra-special Christmas present), and—maybe most important of all—a notepad with a little flat pencil. On the back of the notepad she kept a long numbered list of the projects she’d completed. She used the pages inside for sketching brand-new projects.

    Ellie reached for the notepad and studied the sketch of today’s project. It was a good one.

    If it all went according to her plan—which it sometimes did, but sometimes didn’t (building was tricky that way)—the water balloon launcher would work like a slingshot and throw water balloons way, way, way farther than Ellie and Kit could throw them on their own. To be more specific, it would throw water balloons way, way, way across the yards, right onto the neighborhood boys’ heads.

    All the mad that Ellie was feeling over the boys’ not letting Ellie and Kit play soccer whooshed out of her body, and she rubbed her hands together sneakily. The boys were never going to see this coming!

    Ellie pulled her hammer from her tool belt and got to work on the launcher. She nailed brooms together and used a garage sale sign to keep the whole thing nice and solid so it wouldn’t tip over when it shot out a balloon.

    Is it time for this? Kit asked, holding up a funnel and pointing to Ellie’s drawing.

    Yep, Ellie said. The funnel was Ellie’s dad’s—he used it to change the oil in the car. She figured he would understand why she needed to borrow it. Soaking the neighborhood boys for not letting girls play soccer was a pretty good cause.

    Ellie pulled down her safety goggles and lifted her drill. She drilled two little holes in each side of the funnel, near the top. The drill was one of her favorite tools because it was the only electric tool she was allowed to use without her mom and dad watching. She’d written Ellie Bell’s Drill across the side in purple paint pen, then drawn some flowers and some dragons, which had mostly rubbed off by now since she used it so much. A drill was a very good tool to have—she could use it to tighten or loosen or put in screws, to put holes in things, and once she’d even attached a fork to the end of it and used it to mix a milk shake. It had worked really well, but her dad said that wasn’t an appropriate use of a drill (but then he’d whispered that it was a clever idea all the same).

    Ellie looped stretchy exercise bands through the funnel, then tied them to the launcher. Then Kit, who had really good handwriting, wrote The Water Empress down one of the broomsticks in fancy swirly letters.

    ‘Water Empress’? Ellie asked.

    We can’t just call it a water balloon launcher. It has to have a name—like roller coasters and boats.

    Ellie nodded—this was the sort of thing Kit was always thinking of.

    It’s beautiful, Ellie said, putting her hands on her hips proudly. She smiled—actually, she smirked—then wiggled her fingers anxiously. Let’s get the balloons!

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