My 10 year old is an avid reader and loves books on science topics. “The Most Beautiful Molecule” and “Chemistry: Self-teaching Guide” and just finished “The Joy of Chemistry”. We got some free copies of a few older books, “Optics: Light for a New Age” and “Laserlight (Schneider)”, that have been read multiple times. “How to Invent Everything”, “How Things Work: The Inner Life of Everyday Machines”, and DK’s “Help Your Kid With Science” are firm favorites that also get read multiple times. Any suggestions you think would fit this interest would be most welcome. Thanks!
by Niablis
1 Comment
Little kid me absolutely adored the DK Eyewitness Series books. Wonderful books with fantastic, relevant photos with extremely detailed text and captions. There’s a crapload of them out there- here’s a link to the official website that lists them: [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/ACC/dk-eyewitness?page=1](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/ACC/dk-eyewitness?page=1)
And. . . this one is going to be a longshot, but I’d be doing little kid me a disservice if I didn’t recommend it. Does your kiddo, by chance, have a fascination with engineering disasters? Apollo 13, Titanic, airplane crashes, building collapses, the like? Because that was my obsession when I was around your kid’s age, and there was a niche book in my middle school library that I read relentlessly. It’s an old engineering “textbook” that isn’t actually a textbook called “When Technology Fails” by Neil Schlager. It’s a huge collection of bite-sized (about six pages per), well-written case studies of engineering disasters from the 20th century. It goes into some detail about the mechanical failures of each. If your kiddo loves carrying around huge books to brag about how good of a reader he is, he’ll eat this one right up since it’s actually quite an easy read despite the size due to its structure. But if he’s intimidated by thick books. . . this one’s not for him.
The book’s out of print now but library copies are pretty cheap and usually of good quality. Here’s a link: [https://www.amazon.com/When-Technology-Fails-Significant-Technological/dp/0810389088/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=](https://www.amazon.com/When-Technology-Fails-Significant-Technological/dp/0810389088/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)