Science Comics: Bridges: Engineering Masterpieces

by Dan Zettwoch

Overview

A 2023 National Science Teachers Association Best STEM Book

Suspend your disbelief with Science Comics: Bridges, a new volume of First Second's STEM graphic novel series!

Follow Bea, Archie, Trudy, and Spencer (otherwise known as the BATS!) as they crisscross the globe using every type of bridge: beam, arch, truss, and suspension. From ancient low-slung rope bridges to modern hi-tech towers of steel, they’ll traverse ‘em all. Their journey will take them through history and connect them with new ideas and different cultures. Along the way they'll identify the dangerous forces trying to bring bridges crashing down, and how to defeat them…through engineering!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250216892
Publisher:	First Second
Publication date:	07/19/2022
Series:	Science Comics Series
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	9 - 13 Years

About the Author

Dan Zettwoch is a cartoonist, information designer, and printmaker. In addition to many self-published zines and handcrafted mini-comics, his books include Birdseye Bristoe (Drawn & Quarterly), Amazing Facts & Beyond (Uncivilized Books), and Science Comics: Cars (First Second). His goofball illustrations and jam-packed diagrams have also been seen in the Missouri History Museum, the State Capitol, and in homemade screen prints commemorating local birds, baseball, and gross foods.

Editorial Reviews

A Junior Library Guild selection

"A solid, soaring survey." —Kirkus, starred review

Praise for the Science Comics series:

"The insight behind these books is a powerful one. So much information about the world around us is actually better conveyed visually, through charts, illustrations, and sequential panels, than purely using words." —New York Times

"Like having a Time Life Science Library in comic books. Which is awesome!" —Popular Science

From the Publisher

★ 2022-05-11
To unpack the equation “engineering = science + art,” a quartet of pontists survey and explain bridge design.

Taking a worldwide tour that goes from a fallen log across a stream in Kenya’s Aberdare National Park to the 164.8-kilometer-long Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, the four guides point out salient features of dozens of bridges ancient and modern while pausing to explain loads and forces, analyze materials, give the nod to historical disasters like the Tay Bridge collapse (inviting young experimenters to test model bridges of their own), and, importantly, marvel at the beauty as well as the utility of well-designed, well-placed bridges. The cast is a diverse lot—ranging from Trudy, a light-skinned retired science teacher who zooms through the chapter on truss bridges on a tricycle, to Black-presenting fifth grader Spence, who hangs with suspension bridges—and their enthusiasm is so contagious that by the end readers willing to linger over Zettwoch’s exactly drawn structures will not only view bridges in their own locales with fresh appreciation, but have no trouble distinguishing a corbel arch from a Warren pony truss.

A solid, soaring survey. (glossary, bibliography) (Graphic nonfiction. 11-14)

Kirkus Reviews