Ara the Dream Innovator

Grades 1 to 4

A STEM book for young innovators everywhere, for you are never too small to dream big! This much-anticipated companion to Ara The Star Engineer spotlights the innovation journey, introducing readers to what it takes to start a start-up, and turn ideas into reality.

Ara is a young girl who loves to dream BIG. Many of her amazing ideas come to her in her dreams. So Ara builds a Dream Decoder to capture them. But other kids have big dreams too. What about them? With help from her entrepreneur-mentors and her droid DeeDee (who dreams of--beep! beep!--BIG ice creams), Ara embarks on a quest to make her Dream Decoder FTW - For The World! First stop: a Hackathon to find a diverse team of fellow thinkers and tinkerers. Then--fingers crossed--they'll earn a spot at an Accelerator where, with tweaks and testing, they can make the Dream Decoder work for all kids.

A story about inclusive innovation, and making your dreams come true!

About the Author

Komal Singh is a techie by day and a storyteller mom by night - one who loves coding and cupcakes, data crunching and day dreaming, pottery making and program planning. This is her second book about Ara’s STEM adventures. The first, Ara the Star Engineer was inspired by her 4-year-old daughter's hypothesis that "engineers are boys". Singh is passionate about using technology as an enabler and an equalizer for all. Komal grew up in India and studied Computer Science at Delhi University and later moved to Canada to complete her Masters’ degree in C.S from Simon Fraser University. She has worked as a software engineer with tech consulting firms and is currently an Engineering Program Manager at Google. Komal lives in Waterloo, Canada, with her husband and two little kids.