This week, my kids and I will be examining specimens from an alien planet. We won't be able to see inside the containers or open them, but we'll use our senses and perform some experiments that will allow us to make inferences about what might be inside.

This is all inspired by a rather unremarkable book titled Dr. Xargle's Book of Earth Hounds by Jeanne Willis. Although the book is entertaining enough, I wouldn’t have given it a second look if it hadn’t been listed as a so-called "mentor text" in an inspiring book called Picture-Perfect Science Lessons, in which authors Karen Ansberry and Emily Morgan show how children's books can guide scientific inquiry.

Dr. Xargle is a hairy and tentacled green alien who aims to edify his extraterrestrial students about Earth dogs. Unfortunately, the professor has drawn some off-base conclusions, such as that Earthlings lay newspapers on the floor for their puppies to read and that the dogs' eyes are made of buttons.

Although there's nothing overtly scientific about the book, Ansberry and Morgan have realized that it makes a great catalyst for a conversation about the differences between observation and inference. Which of Dr. Xargle's statements are observations, and which are inferences? Why do you think his inferences are so wrong? When would scientists need to make inferences?

For example, atomic structure is pretty difficult to observe directly, and yet scientists think they know a lot about it. As part of our exploration of inquiry and observation, my kids and I will be learning about Ernest Rutherford, whose experiments with how particles of matter passed through layers of thin gold foil famously dispelled the "plum pudding" model of atomic structure and led him to infer that atoms have a small, positively charged nucleus surrounded by negatively charged electrons.

Of course, tiny things are not the only subjects that don't lend themselves well to observation. We also can't directly observe the past, for example, or answer questions of why with observation alone. Although Picture-Perfect Science Lessons doesn’t include current research for obvious reasons, it occurs to me that discussing a recent Current Biology paper that proposes that turtles developed shells to help with digging rather than protection would make a lot of sense here (I’ll share news coverage from The Atlantic with my kids, but you can also check out the original paper by Lyson and colleagues).

Clearly aimed at classroom teachers, Picture-Perfect Science Lessons provides photocopy-ready activity pages, suggested experiments (such as the alien-sample one noted here) to go along with each topic, and at least two suggested picture books (the authors also suggest Seven Blind Mice to go along with the inquiry-versus-observation unit, but often one of the suggested titles is non-fiction). It’s designed for grades 3–6, although the authors have written similar books for different grade levels. Any US teachers out there will be happy to know that each lesson is associated with standards from the Common Core framework ("obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information" and "scale, proportion, and quantity," in this case).

But, if you're just a parent looking to find ways to engage your kids with science at home, this is still an awesome resource. I was really impressed with how interested my kids were in the card-sorting activity suggested in the book, for example; it's clear that these lessons have been tested out on real students. What's more, now that I've read through Picture-Perfect Science Lessons and tried a few of the units, I'm looking at children’s books in a whole new light: science lessons are everywhere.