Reddit mentions of George's Secret Key to the Universe

Steven Hawking and his daughter wrote some children's books on physics. For a five year old they would be good.

http://www.amazon.com/Georges-Secret-Universe-Stephen-Hawking/dp/1416954627

http://www.amazon.com/Georges-Cosmic-Treasure-Hunt-Hawking/dp/1416986715

As the father of a beautiful, wonderful, intelligent, old soul of a daughter who loves science, math, and biology, I would recommend getting her in to sports. Team sports specifically.

My daughter has no interest in Disney princesses. She doesn't care for barbies. And has no use for dresses and hair ribbons, and doesn't put up with any Justin Bieber bullshit. She's happiest at the top of a tree, makes up songs about Nikola Tesla, recently aced both the math and reading portions of the state tests at school, is in love with her bearded dragon, recently learned to solder, and prefers William Hartnel over Matt Smith. She does have a number of American Girl dolls that she loves, but only because she loves the books. And books are one of her favorite things. She goes through about two of them a week. She's almost finished all the Roald Dahl books, almost finished all the L Frank Baum Oz books, and countless other books of all ilk. (including Hawking!).

As great as all that sounds, she's in third grade and it can be tough. She plays piano and loves to climb rock walls, but has never been interested in soccer or basketball or any other team sport. As a result, she has a hard time connecting with the other kids at school. She has one super good friend, and when he was recently out sick for a few days, she spent a lot of excess time alone because the other girls told her she was weird. It broke my heart.

We think that if we could get her to join a team sport, even just for the fun of it, she'd quickly learn how to work with the other girls. And being about 4-12" taller than every other girl her age, she'd hopefully have enough of a speed advantage to make up for a lack of initial skill.

Parenting can be so much fun, and so hard to do. Who knows if I'm doing it right? Who knows if anyone is? All we can do is try to react as quickly and adeptly as we can to what is happening to them day in and day out.

*Edit: Had to fix a spelling mistake. While I know how to spell Roald Dahl's name, my iPad apparently didn't.

First, I think it's important to avoid the trap of saying we know. We don't know yet, but we're finding out. In fact, if she studies hard, she might be the person to find out!

I haven't read these, and they're for ages older than her by a few years, but you can start to get a sense of the age of the universe.

http://www.amazon.com/Georges-Secret-Universe-Stephen-Hawking/dp/1416954627/

http://www.amazon.com/George-Big-Bang-Georges-Secret/dp/1442440058/

A sense of scale of time is the best critique of religiosity. Can you walk her along a time line? Invent one in your city? One million years per foot? This is now, at our front door. When did people first start writing? Here. When were the first multicellular animals? Here. First life? Here. Planet formation. Our star forming. And 2/3rds of the universe of stars forming and dying before that. With a little real perspective, human-centric universes are absurd. Let her ask questions and plot them with little flags. Making a trip back to the big bang once in a while, some place in town you visit often, should cement how long ago that was.

Not related to evolution, but if he's interested in science in general, George's Secret Key to the Universe. Says ages 9+, but take that as you will.