So You Want To Be An Anthropologist

From the award-winning So You Want To Be A... SeriesGRAND PRIZE - 2026 Purple Dragonfly Book AwardsSILVER AWARD - 2026 CIPA EVVY Book Awards, Children’s NonfictionWhy do people sing to you once a year, watch you blow out fire on top of a cake, and then happily eat the cake you just blew all over?Anthropologists ask questions like that for a living. They study people everywhere and across all of time, from reindeer herders in the Arctic to the kids next to you at lunch. So You Want To Be An Anthropologist is an engaging, beautifully illustrated introduction to anthropology for kids ages 10 to 14, and a rewarding read-aloud for curious readers 8 and up.Readers explore the field’s four branches: cultural, biological, linguistic, and archaeological. They learn how anthropologists live alongside the people they study, pick up new languages, and notice the parts of a culture nobody explains out loud. A day-in-the-life chapter drops them into a coastal fishing town eight months into fieldwork, hauling crates at dawn, interviewing a retired captain, and tasting a mystery snack nobody will name.True stories fill every chapter: a nine-year-old who found the first bone of a new human relative nearly two million years old; a woman’s DNA read from tar she chewed 5,700 years ago; why some archaeologists lick bones; bedtime songs about a giant wave that saved nearly everyone on an Indonesian island in the 2004 tsunami; and a Neanderthal, blind in one eye, hard of hearing, and unable to use one arm, who survived for years because others cared for him.The book is honest about the hard parts, too: loneliness, culture shock, the long road to a career, the field’s painful history, and the work of returning ancestors and sacred objects to Native nations. Profiles of Franz Boas, Zora Neale Hurston, Ella Cara Deloria, Mary Leakey, Zeresenay Alemseged, and Clyde Snow show the range of people who have shaped the field.Kids will laugh at a field report on 'The Curious Customs of Grown-Ups,' bust myths about dinosaurs and treasure hunters, and enjoy twelve surprising fun facts. Simple activities, like keeping a field notebook and interviewing a grandparent, get them started right away. A glossary, related careers, and curated books, websites, and organizations make it a valuable resource for homeschool families, social studies classrooms, librarians, and parents seeking meaningful career exploration and STEM books for kids.At its heart, this book teaches empathy, cultural understanding, and scientific thinking, showing young readers that every custom makes sense from the inside, including their own. 6