Twelve bedtime stories, and not one of them was written for the page. They are episodes of the Netflix series Ada Twist, Scientist, retold in print by Gabrielle Meyer, who worked as a story editor on the show. Color illustrations, about five minutes each out loud, no plot carried across, so you read one and shut it. That last part is the entire design at four years old. The store shelves it as nonfiction. It behaves like a storybook, because that is what it is.
The science it actually teaches
Be straight about this one. There is almost no content science in this book. Nobody finishes it knowing how a magnet works or why bread rises, and any note that tells you otherwise is selling.
What is in here is a habit, run twelve times in a row at the hour of day a small child is least defended against learning something.
The habit goes like this. Something happens that nobody in the story can answer yet, and the answer gets reached by doing rather than by an adult walking in with it. Ada is a child. She is the one doing the work. That sounds obvious until you count how many science books written for six-year-olds are a grown-up in a lab coat handing over facts while the child stands there as the audience. This one puts the child in the working position.
Twelve stories also means twelve unrelated problems, and that does one quiet useful thing. It stops science meaning a topic. This is not the dinosaur book or the space book. It is a way of going at something, applied twelve different times, and a four-year-old who hears all twelve has been shown a pattern rather than a subject.
That is the honest haul. A habit and a stance, no content. If content is what you want from this series, the nonfiction spin-offs exist and this is not one of them.
The child it lands with
Three to seven, at bedtime, with you doing the reading. That is the real window. The child who asks for the show again. The child who is not reading alone yet and would sit still for a chapter book only under protest. The younger sibling of a child who is already deep into the Questioneers chapter books and wants a version of that they can have now.
One place to stop and talk
One question, at the end of any story: what did Ada try? Children this age answer with the outcome instead, so hold them to the trying. The trying is the part that transfers, and it is the part a five-year-old can copy at the kitchen table in the morning.
What to know going in
The band is the problem here, and it is the reason this note exists.
The store tags this 1 to 4. The top of that band is wrong. A fourth grader reading on their own will find it beneath them inside two pages and will be right to. This is a read-aloud for a three to seven-year-old, and a child who has aged into chapter books has aged out of this one. Buying it for the wrong end of that band is the only way to waste money here.
Second, smaller. These are retellings of episodes, not stories built for the page. If your house already has the series on, some of this will be familiar rather than new. At bedtime that is a feature. If you were expecting fresh material, it is not.
Last, it is sold as nonfiction and it reads as fiction. That matters less here than it would in an animal book, because nothing in these stories claims to be a fact about the world. It is still worth knowing which of the two you are handing over.
Where to get it
It is $12.99 on our shelf at 5-Minute Ada Twist, Scientist Stories. That is more than the chapter books in the same series cost, and the reason is color printing on every page, which for a book aimed at a child who cannot read yet is the part doing the actual work. If your child is already reading alone, skip this and buy one of the chapter books instead. If you have a four-year-old who asks for the show and a bedtime that needs ending rather than starting, this is the right five minutes. The rest of the Stealth Science shelf is aimed at older readers than this.
If your child liked this one
Books we have written about that sit close to this one, by reading level and by subject.
Aaron Slater and the Sneaky Snake: Who Gets to Decide
Aaron Slater and the Sneaky Snake: The Questioneers Chapter Book #6 by Andrea Beaty
Grade 1 to 4
Ada Twist and the Disappearing Dogs: Method, Out Loud
Ada Twist and the Disappearing Dogs: The Questioneers Chapter Book #5 by Andrea Beaty
Grade 1 to 4
Caterflies and Ice: The Book Where Zoey Gets It Wrong
Caterflies and Ice: Zoey and Sassafras #4 by Asia Citro
Grade 1 to 4
Dragons and Marshmallows: The Science and the Catch
Dragons and Marshmallows: Zoey and Sassafras #1 by Asia Citro
Grade 1 to 4
Browse every book we have written about by age, by kind of book and by subject: Find the right book for your child. Or see the whole Stealth Science shelf.
