Kids love stories, almost as much as they love creating things. In order to fuel this creative spirit, and introduce them to the world of electronics, Ellie Saves the Day! combines both as a book/kit complete with a PCB, resistors, capacitors, a 555 timer, and a pair of LEDs.
The hero of the book, Ellie, is a light-emitting diode, or LED, whose job is to blink back and forth with her friend Ed at a train crossing when a train passes. As it so happens, the PCB that controls the blinking is missing components that Ellie—with a little help from readers—must complete before the train passes.
The book is illustrated, and could hold a child’s attention even without the electronics lesson that they learn and apply along the way via an included kit. This would be a great way for parents who aren’t electronics-savvy to introduce these concepts to kids (and to themselves). For those that do know something about electronics, it’s a great way to introduce things on a level appropriate for kids still in the single-digits or just beyond in age.
The book was a fully-funded Kickstarter, which, as discussed at 43 minutes into this podcast, was delivered on time. The original campaign is found here, including a video with a reenactment of a “certain” office movie by kids at just after 1:30 in the intro video.
