Science Comics: Cars: Engines That Move You is an excellent companion to First Second’s Maker Comics: Fix a Car! While that book concentrates on taking care of a vehicle, this graphic novel by Dan Zettwoch focuses on understanding how they work and came to be with incredibly comprehensive, well-cartooned content. The book covers, among other topics, some history of vehicle travel the physics of combustion and how engines work the history of the wheel and the steam engine the development […]

The Science Comics series is generally outstanding, but Rockets: Defying Gravity by Anne Drozd and Jerzy Drozd is one of the best. An exciting subject is made understandable though our charming hosts, a series of educated animals with connections to space exploration. The first chapter (as you can see in these preview pages) covers physics, or as it’s put, “What Makes Rockets Go?” Lewis the pigeon tells us of early experiments in hilarious fashion, calling a wooden, steam-powered bird his […]

A rare misfire for the Science Comics series, Science Comics: Solar System: Our Place in Space goes past educational to sound patronizing. For a book aimed at ages 9-13, the tone is too “kiddy”, and the lessons are presented too blatantly. As written by Rosemary Mosco and illustrated by Jon Chad (who previously authored Science Comics: Volcanoes), it just doesn’t live up to the high standards set by the other books in the line, which are both informative and entertaining. […]

Andy Hirsch is responsible for one of my favorite Science Comics titles, the one about dogs. That’s a high bar to meet, and I have to say, I wasn’t quite as involved in Science Comics: Trees: Kings of the Forest — but trees are a very different subject. They’re more inspiring than adorable. Although Hirsch tries to recapture the cute with his narrator, an acorn, this is instead a volume more about knowledge, and there’s plenty covered. A frog, a […]

The latest in the outstanding line of Science Comics, non-fiction graphic novels for kids about technology and our natural world, is Joe Flood’s Sharks: Nature’s Perfect Hunter. Unlike other animal books in the line, such as Dogs or Bats, this volume doesn’t have a bridging story or a cute narrator example of the species. That wouldn’t be appropriate for the subject. Instead, this is a straightforward presentation of the various types of sharks, their biology (including their jaws, of course), […]

The Science Comics series of non-fiction educational graphic novels is usually outstanding, but I found Robots and Drones: Past, Present, and Future (written by Mairghread Scott (Transformers) and illustrated by Jacob Chabot (SpongeBob Comics)) a rare misfire for the line. Perhaps it’s a reflection of my relative lack of interest in the topic, but I didn’t find this installment as entertaining, informative, or frankly, good as many of the others. It’s narrated by Pouli, a mechanical bird and “the first […]

The most recent Science Comics entry in the First Second line of excellently readable educational graphic novels is Plagues: The Microscopic Battlefield by Falynn Koch (who also wrote and drew the Bats volume). It uses the framework of scientists working within a computer simulation to personalize various cells, germs, and processes when the human body gets infected, including Yellow Fever, Bubonic Plague, and a white blood T-Cell. Scientists are trying to enlist harmful germs in attempts to develop new vaccines. […]