Welcome!

Carla Mooney is an award-winning children’s author from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

She is the author of numerous nonfiction and fiction books and magazine articles for children and teens. She has won several nonfiction awards for her books.

Carla has her BS in Economics and is a former certified public accountant. She loves writing about science and technology, nature and the environment, history, biography, business, current issues, health and medicine, and sports.

Carla is a regular STEM Tuesday contributor on the Mixed-Up Files of Middle-Grade Authors blog.

When not writing, Carla is the Pittsburgh chapter director for Flashes of Hope, a nonprofit organization that provides professional portraits of kids with cancer and other life-threatening conditions and raises money for childhood cancer research.

The Nature Generation
2025 Green Earth Book Award
Recommended Reading

What's on your dinner table? You probably have some form of maize, wheat, rice, and potatoes on your plate! From London to Lagos to Los Angeles, these staple foods dominate our breakfast bowls, lunch boxes, and dinner tables. In today’s world, more than half of the calories that we consume come from maize, wheat, and rice alone. How did this happen? In The Science of Seeds: Why We Eat Maize, Wheat, Rice, and Potatoes with Hands-On Science Activities for Kids, young anthropologists learn about how humans co-evolved alongside these foods and why these crops are considered the building blocks of the world as we know it. Climate-concerned kids explore global efforts to save seeds, farm smarter, and build edible ecosystems. Plus, learn to cook with some great recipes! Hands-on science projects and essential questions offer kids a deep exploration into why we eat what we eat!

Nomad Press, April 2024

Coming Soon!
Nomad Press
Fall 2025

A fully illustrated book about simple machines for the next generation of engineers!

How do we build skyscrapers? How did ancient people build pyramids? Why are gears an essential part of motors?

In Engineering: How the Six Simple Machines Support the World, young engineers learn how mechanical, structural, civil, and other types of engineering are based on the six simple machines that humans have been using for thousands of years. The screw, pulley, wedge, wheel and axle, inclined plane, and lever are used to build roads, skyscrapers, bridges, engines, and even other tools. They are the building blocks on which more complicated machines are based. Without these six simple machines, the world would look far different and be much more work to navigate!