About STEM Friday

How did STEM Friday get started?

In 2004, Anastasia Suen began writing for Booklist, a magazine published by American Library Association. Three years later, she created a blog meme for her #kidlit Book of the Day blog and began sharing nonfiction books on Mondays.

But one day a week wasn’t enough to share all of the great nonfiction books she was reading, so Anastasia began sharing STEM books on Fridays. In August 2011, she created a new blog meme logo:

STEM Friday

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

Other bloggers asked to participate in STEM Friday and new blog round-up meme was born! Each week a different blogger hosted the round-up. After teachers and librarians asked us to host the roundup in one place (making it easier to find) we moved to the WordPress.com site in 2012.

In 2014, a new Booklist editor asked Anastasia to start a new Focus on STEM column for Booklist’s Quick Tips for Schools and Libraries newsletter.

In October 2018, the STEM Friday bloggers moved to this new ad-free site. As new social media was created, however, people migrated to those new platforms and stopped blogging.

After 21 years of sharing new STEM #kidlit books, Anastasia Suen retired from Booklist in May 2025. The following year, she began sharing the activities she had created for her own (400+) books.

Anastasia Suen is a bookstore affiliate for Amazon and Bookshop.

Bookshop is an online bookstore with a mission to financially support local, independent bookstores. By design, we give away over 75% of our profit margin to stores, publications, authors and others who make up the thriving, inspirational culture around books!

If you click on the name of one of these bookstores in a blog post, the link will take you to their site where you can purchase the book and read it! If you buy a book after clicking on these links, they will send me a small commission.

Please note, I was an IndieBound affiliate before Bookshop launched in January 2020. In 2023, Bookshop announced that “beginning March 1, IndieBound.org, the American Bookseller Association’s consumer-facing online bookselling and marketing platform, will switch to using Bookshop.org to handle sales and fulfillment.”

If you click on an Indiebound link from an older blog post, the announcement also says: “All buy buttons on bookstores sites or affiliated sites using IndieBound links will switch to Bookshop.org links.“

Still have questions? Email me at asuen.edits at gmail dot com