The suggestion of science magazines is a good one. I have found Scientific American more technical and less interesting these days than it used to be forty years ago. For a young person, I would recommend Science News over it–it has shorter and more exciting articles.
For biology, I think that Matt Ridley has written some fantastic, generally accessible books. I especially like Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, but his other books are quite interesting as well.
For mathematics (of the entertaining variety) I recommend Ian Stewart books and for logic, Raymond Smullyan.
In looking for books for a high school student, I’d go with recommendations that interested scientists make outside of their own field. I think I am too close to quantum physics to make good recommendations in that area, although John Gribbin’s books might be a good bet.
Some high school students really like the experience of working in a research lab, and some don’t. A student should not write off a scientific career just because he/she finds the type of work that high school students are allowed to do in a research lab pretty boring. (Often, that work actually is pretty boring.)
My D considers herself a science person. She briefly thought about pre-med at the start of college but quickly decided she really didn’t want that long of a haul, that level of stress etc. My D did a lot of research with a professor in college and enjoyed it but it wasn’t the path she ultimately wanted to pursue. She wants to work with kids and looked into a number of different options (by shadowing professionals in different fields) before deciding on speech pathology. She is in grad school now and is loving the field. There is a lot of science (anatomy, neuroscience) in her curriculum. Some other career ideas for a person who likes biology might be physical therapy, occupational therapy, nursing, physician’s assistant.
IMO the important thing for your D to know now is that there will be many options, many paths that she can follow.
In sixth grade we were asked to write down our biggest goal, which was then published in a book and given to us at our 6th grade “graduation”. Most kids wanted to become mothers or play for the NFL. My goal was to cure cancer, which everyone found to be hilarious and preposterous. I am currently in grad school at the best cancer institute in the world trying to better understand this terrible disease. There’s still nothing I’d like more than to find a cure, and I’m putting myself in the best position possible to help make that goal a reality!
Happy to field any questions about scientific research that you or her may have.
She doesn’t really need to “focus” on anything right now. She’ll be a freshman who will be exploring many things in her next 4 years. Encourage her to take any science classes she wants. My D didn’t know what she wanted to study until she’d already applied to colleges (mostly undeclared). While she’s always been very strong in math and science, she didn’t do “sciency” things in HS (track, tennis, mock trial, digital arts classes, writing stories and poems). Took 2 years of Chem because she liked the teacher. Didn’t take AP Bio because she’d heard less than great things about the teacher. Never took physics, probably because she didn’t have room in her schedule and/or it didn’t particularly float her boat. Took AP Enviro Science her senior year because it looked interesting, and the interdisciplinary nature of the class appealed to her. It’s the one class she always talked about. Now she’s a rising junior at UCB majoring in Environmental Science and minoring in GIST. She’s doing an internship this summer in the Environmental Health & Safety department at a pharma company back east. If you had asked me what she would be doing in college back when she was a HS freshman, I wouldn’t have known how to answer.
