UD professor turns research into children's books

Research papers can contain quite a bit of complicated and academic language. Danielle Dixson knows that.

But the assistant professor at the University of Delaware wants to have her research be more accessible to the masses.

To do so, she takes her papers and makes children’s books out of them.

“It’s great that we know more information or we found a study or found something interesting,” she said.

“But it needs to be communicated to more than just people who read scientific papers, which is not the majority of people.”

Dixson, who joined UD in June, started writing children’s books while she was doing post-doctorate work in Fiji in 2012. It was her way of communicating with locals there about her work, in addition to making videos for adults.

The books were well received, she said.

“Even though the Fijians are very tied to the ocean, they don’t have a huge (amount of) marine education in their education system,” she said. “A lot of the stuff I was doing was trying to help with that and get them more engaged in what I was doing.”

At her lab, Dixson and her team research marine conservation and how animals act when their sensory systems are affected by changing conditions in the ocean.

In the spring, she plans on teaching an introduction to biological oceanography course, while also developing a marine conservation course and potentially a marine animal behavior course.

It’s a topic Dixson has researched for eight years and hopes can get more attention.

“Animal behavior has been not incorporated in a lot of the conservation initiatives as much as it could be or should be,” she said. “I think it’s important that we can get information on how changing conditions will affect behavior and how the behavior may cascade into other areas.”

Students get in act

Subject matter for her seven books include sharks, ocean acidification and the importance of plants being planted along the coastline so fish can find homes. The books are designed for ages 4 to 8.

Not only does she create children’s books for her own papers, Dixson has had her students design books based on their own work.

“That helps them communicate with the general public and they get a much better understanding of their own research,” she said. “You have to really understand something to make it at a level a 7-year-old can understand.”

At UD, she hopes to collaborate with the school’s education and English departments, along with graphic designers, to refine the books and publish them.

“The more the kids understand about what’s happening, the more they can make changes in their own lives or make it a priority for them,” she said.

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