There is a chemistry set on your table, still shrink wrapped, and you are about to say six things your child is not going to listen to.
That is what this book is for.
Be clear about what it is not. It is not a science book. It teaches nothing about the world: no forces, no cells, no weather. Its subject is lab procedure, which is to say the rules you follow so that a good afternoon does not end at the sink with somebody's eye under the tap. Goggles, spills, labels, and why you never lean over a container to smell what is in it. Same superhero, same comic panels as the rest of the Graphic Science line, entirely different job.
It is the least interesting book on our shelf and it is the one to read first.
The science it actually teaches
Almost none, and that is deliberate rather than a failure, so this section will be short and honest.
What it teaches is procedure with the reason attached, which is the only kind of rule a child keeps. "Wear goggles" is a rule that gets ignored the third time. "Wear goggles, because your eyes do not repair the way skin does, and the splash you were not expecting is the only kind there is" is a rule with a mechanism behind it, and a mechanism is what makes it stick.
The wafting rule is the best example in the book. You do not put your nose over a container. You fan the air toward you with a hand, because the concentration right at the surface can be many times what it is a foot away. That is chemistry, in a small way. It is also the difference between a bad smell and a burned airway.
Labels get the same treatment: what is in it, what it does, and what to do if it lands on you, read before the lid moves rather than after. Spills get a procedure instead of a panic, which matters because a spill is exactly the moment when nobody thinks clearly. And the equipment gets located in advance, the sink, the running water, the way out of the room, because none of those are findable in the four seconds you would have.
That is the whole content. It is small and it is worth eight dollars.
The child it lands with
You are the audience here as much as your child is, and it is worth being blunt about that.
This is a book for a household that is about to start doing hands on work and has not done it before. If your science so far has been reading and watching, and you have just bought a kit, this is the thing to put in front of the child first.
It earns its keep hardest in a co-op, or any room with several children and one adult in it. One adult cannot watch six pairs of hands. Six children who have all read the same rules from the same comic, a week before, have a shared vocabulary you can point at instead of a lecture you have to give.
And it lands with the confident one. The child who is quick, capable, and does not think the rules are about them. Coming from a superhero rather than from a parent, the rules arrive without the argument attached, which is most of what you were paying for.
One place to stop and talk
Do not stop inside the book. Close it, and walk into your own kitchen.
Take your child with you and find the things the book named, out loud, in the room you will actually be working in. Where is the running water. Where would the goggles live so that reaching for them is not a decision. What is the surface, and does it matter if something gets spilled on it. Where does the flame go if you use one, and what is above it and beside it. Which drawer has the thing you would grab.
Then do the part everybody skips. Decide, in advance and out loud, what happens if something goes wrong. Who is told. What gets touched and what does not. Where you both go. A child who has said that sentence once in a calm kitchen is a different child in the two seconds after a spill than one who has only read it.
Last, agree on the one rule that is not negotiable in your house, and let your child pick the wording. Ours would be about eyes. Yours might be about the stove. It does not matter much which rule it is, and it matters a great deal that there is exactly one, said in their own words, rather than fourteen said in yours.
What to know going in
Buying this book does not make your house safe. It is rules on a page, and rules on a page do nothing without an adult standing there enforcing them. If you read this and feel covered, the book has done you harm rather than good, because the feeling of having handled it is the actual hazard.
A book about accidents describes accidents. Chemicals in eyes, spills, burns, things going wrong in a room where a child is standing. Most children find that steadying, which is the point of it. A cautious or anxious child can find it does the opposite and comes away more nervous about the kit than they were before. You know which child you have.
And if you are buying one Max Axiom title for a child who loves science, this is not the one. There is nothing here to be curious about. It is a manual, it reads like a manual, and a child who wanted magnets or volcanoes will be flatly disappointed by it. Buy it alongside something, never instead of something.
The store bands it at grades 4 to 8. It reads easier than the bottom of that band, and a capable eight year old will manage it without help.
Where to get it
The paperback is $8.99 at Lessons in Science Safety with Max Axiom, Super Scientist.
This is a companion, so buy it as one. Put it in the same order as whatever kit or experiment book you were already getting, and let it arrive with them rather than on its own, because a safety book that turns up by itself gets read by nobody. If you run a co-op, it is the cheapest thing on the Stealth Science shelf that saves an adult a conversation, and it saves that conversation once per child.
If your child liked this one
Books we have written about that sit close to this one, by reading level and by subject.
Adventures in Sound: Physics You Can Hear at Home
Adventures in Sound with Max Axiom, Super Scientist by Emily Sohn
Grade 4 to 8
Decoding Genes: Where the Comic Format Runs Out of Room
The Decoding Genes with Max Axiom, Super Scientist by Amber J Keyser
Grade 4 to 8
Emi and the Rhino Scientist: How One Calf Happened
Emi and the Rhino Scientist by Mary Kay Carson
Grade 5 to 8
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.
