Why Communities Need Engineers

Community is essential for humans. But living together comes with challenges-challenges often solved by engineers!

Access to clean drinking water? Engineers did that. Managing garbage? Engineers too. Safe and comfortable places to live with electricity and running water? You got it, engineers. Engineers are also behind the communication and transportation networks that keep our communities operating smoothly. Oh, and advances in healthcare? You can thank engineers for that too.

Engineers have been shaping our world by designing and building amazing structures and machines for thousands of years. From ancient civilizations to modern metropolises, engineering inventions have been essential to human survival and prosperity. In Why Communities Need Engineers, young readers will discover how engineers have shaped life as we know it and how they could save our planet in the future.
Key Selling Points

• This STEM title introduces young readers to engineering innovations from the past and present that have helped shape our world and examines potential future innovations. The chapters are divided into areas that impact communities, including inventions in water access, waste, energy, shelter, communication, transportation and healthcare.

• This book asks young readers to think critically about engineering design in their own communities, introduces career options in the field and inspires innovation for the future.

• It highlights well-known (and not-so-well-known) engineering examples from around the world, including the steam engine, magnetic levitation trains, the development of the Apple computer, the telegraph, recycling robots, toilet-to-tap drinking water, the first prosthesis and stem cell therapy.

• Extra content introduces readers to notable women in engineering, including Elsie MacGill (who produced British Hawker Hurricane fighter planes in WWII), Margaret A. Wilcox (inventor of the car heater) and Lilia Ann Abron (first Black woman to get a PhD in chemical engineering).

• The author has a bachelor of applied science in civil engineering from the University of British Columbia. She studied at a time when not many women were in the field.
Part of the nonfiction Orca Timeline series for middle-grade readers, this illustrated book examines how engineering has helped build successful communities in the past and present and what engineering innovations could look like in the future.
Helen Liang earned her bachelor of applied science in civil engineering from the University of British Columbia and an associate certificate in technical writing with distinction from the British Columbia Institute of Technology. She enjoys volunteering in her community and church, hiking, writing and learning.

Arden Taylor is a Toronto-based freelance illustrator. A graduate of Sheridan College with an honors bachelor of illustration, she enjoys digitally creating colorful illustrations of architecture and people and designs for wallpaper and other projects. Her clients include Hazlitt Magazine, California Institute of Technology, and her work has been featured in various magazines, newspapers, advertising campaigns and websites. She is the illustrator of Walls and The True Story of Vanilla. It's about time! From the past to the present and into the future, the Orca Timeline series explores how big ideas have shaped humanity. Discover what our collective history can tell us about the planet today and tomorrow. An engineer can help with that!