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:	9781250216908
Publisher:	First Second
Publication date:	07/19/2022
Series:	Science Comics Series
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	160,660
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.40(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

09/30/2022

Gr 4–7—Bea, Archie, Trudy, and Spence are fans of the architecture and engineering of bridges, and together they zip across the globe to visit prominent examples, each allying with a construction technique similar to their names: beam, arch, truss, and suspension. As the physics of each category is explained, the book becomes cumulative, with the reader able to notice how newer bridges use combinations of techniques to distribute force. However, as the gang crisscrosses the planet, the hollowness of the framing narrative is revealed. A fourth-quarter induction of Spence into B.A.T.S. feels groundless, and aside from providing a variety in age, gender, and ethnicity, the characters feel simply like a mnemonic of the types of bridge—which is already present in their team name. They exist to fill out the page while contributing an overstuffed quality to the narration, which is so eager to inform and entertain that the spectacle of the subject matter—the book repeats that bridges should be beautiful as well as functional—never lands under the deluge of captions, jokes, and marginalia. Ultimately, the book wants the reader to use the tools provided to appreciate the bridges one sees in the world, but the aesthetics of the presentation don't inspire the reader with sufficient awe. VERDICT An effective primer on the physics and variety of bridges, but too frenetic and lacking in a sufficient humanist or aesthetic hook to grab many readers unless other volumes in the series are already checked out.—Benjamin Russell

School Library Journal

★ 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

A Junior Library Guild selection

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

From the Publisher