Most of you decided about this book before you finished reading the title.
That is fair, and it is also the reason this note exists. Our job on this shelf is to tell you what is inside a book so you can make the call yourself, and that job matters more here than on any other title we carry. So here is what is in it, stated as plainly as I can manage, with the parts I have confirmed separated from the parts I have not.
It is a comic. Agnieszka Biskup wrote it for the Graphic Science line, the same line and the same format as the energy and electricity titles on our shelf, banded at grades 4 to 8, and the store record shows a table of contents, a glossary, an index and a bibliography.
The subject sits at the end of a chain. The energy book asks what energy is. The electricity book takes one form of it apart. This one is about a consequence of how we get it, and that is why it is a different kind of book from the other two even though it looks identical on a shelf.
The science it actually teaches
There are two different kinds of content in this book and the single most useful thing I can do for you is separate them, because they do not stand on the same footing and a comic does not signal the difference.
The first kind is a mechanism, and it is physics you can check in your own kitchen. Sunlight arrives and warms the ground. The warmed ground radiates heat back outward. Certain gases in the air absorb that outgoing heat instead of letting it leave, and re-radiate part of it back down. That is not a position anybody holds. It is a measurable property of those particular molecules, it was demonstrated in laboratories in the nineteenth century, and it is the reason this planet is not a frozen rock. Nobody on any side of any argument disputes it. If your child comes away with only that, they have learned real, checkable, useful physics, and the book will have earned its nine dollars.
The second kind is measurement, and it is also solid ground. Carbon dioxide, where it comes from, what burning a fuel actually puts into the air, and how anyone can claim to know what the climate was doing before there were thermometers. The store copy says the book covers how scientists measure a changing climate. That work is record-keeping and instruments, and understanding how a record gets made is one of the more valuable things a child can learn from any science book, on any subject.
And then there is a third thing, and it is not the same kind of thing at all. The book states a conclusion: that the warming being measured is caused by human activity. That is the position of the major scientific bodies that work on the question. It is also a sentence a good number of families in this country do not accept, and I am not going to pretend either of those two facts away.
What matters for your decision is not whether that conclusion is right. It is how the book delivers it, and the honest answer is that it asserts it. A comic panel has room for a claim and no room for the working behind it. Your child does not meet the evidence, does not meet the reasoning that gets from a measurement to an attribution, and does not meet the objections. They meet a statement, made by a likeable man in a lab coat who has been right about everything else in the book.
That is not an accusation against this book. It is the format, and it is true of every title in the line. When a Max Axiom book asserts something about magnetism, nobody minds, because nobody argues about magnetism, and the missing working costs a reader nothing. On this one subject the missing working is precisely the thing some parents care about, and pretending otherwise would be useless to you.
The store's own product copy says Max Axiom walks through the mechanism rather than the argument. As far as I can tell from what is on the record, that is a fair description of the balance of the book, and it is still worth your eyes rather than mine.
The child it lands with
This one is less a question of which child than which house, so start with the house and work back.
If the conclusion in this book matches what your family thinks, the book is a straightforward buy, and I would still push you toward the mechanism half. Knowing why heat gets trapped is worth more than knowing what to conclude about it, and a child who only has the conclusion has an opinion rather than an education.
If it does not match what your family thinks, the book is still usable, and I would not skip the subject on that basis. Your child is going to meet this material anyway, in a museum, in a video, at a co-op, on a test, or from a cousin. Meeting it first at your table with you sitting there is a better introduction than meeting it somewhere you are not.
The specific child who benefits most is the one who has already picked up fragments of it and is anxious about them. Children hear the frightening headline version of this subject long before they hear any physics, and fragments plus fear is the worst possible state to leave a child in. A mechanism is the antidote to a fragment. Understanding how something works is calming in a way that reassurance is not.
One place to stop and talk
This is the best use of this particular book, and it has nothing to do with the weather.
Go through it with your child and ask them to sort the sentences into two piles. Pile one is things I could check myself, at least in principle. Pile two is things I am being asked to take on trust from the person telling me.
Heat gets trapped by certain gases goes in pile one, and you can prove it belongs there. The exact temperature record of the last hundred and fifty years goes in pile two for a child, honestly, because nobody in your house took those readings. The claim about the cause goes in pile two as well, and that is not a criticism, it is simply where it sits when the working is not shown.
Then ask the follow-up question, which is the one that pays off for the rest of their life: what would I need to see in order to move something out of pile two? Not whether the author is right. What evidence would settle it.
A child who can do that with a comic can do it with a documentary, a textbook, an advert and a politician. It is the single most transferable skill on this whole shelf, and this book, precisely because it mixes the two kinds of content, is the best object I know of for teaching it.
What to know going in
There is nothing frightening, violent or upsetting in this book. The caution is entirely about the position it takes and about who reads it and how.
State it plainly so nobody is ambushed. This book teaches the greenhouse mechanism, and it also states that current warming is caused by human activity. It presents that as established rather than as a question with sides. If that is not what your family holds, you will not find your position argued against in these pages, because it is not argued about at all, and a parent who hands this over expecting a neutral survey will be surprised. That is worth knowing on the day it arrives rather than a week later.
Second, look at the last few pages yourself before your child does. Books written for children on this subject often close by telling a child what they ought to do about it, and telling a child what to do is a different act from teaching them how something works. I have not confirmed what this particular book does at the end and I am not going to guess. You can settle it in thirty seconds with the book in your hand, and whatever you find, you will want to have your own words ready.
Third, and this is a real one that gets overlooked. Some children take this subject hard. An anxious eight or nine year old can come away from a book like this genuinely afraid about the future in a way that is difficult to walk back, and no amount of accuracy in the text prevents it. If you have that child, read it with them rather than handing it over, and stop where they need to stop.
Last, the reading band. Grades 4 to 8 describes the vocabulary and not the maturity the subject asks for. The bottom of that range can read every word here and still need you sitting next to them.
Where to get it
$8.99 at Understanding Global Warming with Max Axiom, Super Scientist.
Of everything on the Stealth Science shelf, this is the one title I would read cover to cover myself before my child did, and not because there is anything wrong with it. It is because it is the one where you will want your own words ready, and a comic takes twenty minutes to read.
If what you actually want is the physics of heat without arriving anywhere in particular, The Powerful World of Energy in this same line covers heat, transfer and sources of energy and reaches no conclusion about any of it. That is a legitimate choice and not a lesser one. And if you want the whole picture, buy both and read them in that order, because the mechanism makes far more sense to a child who already knows what energy is.
If your child liked this one
Books we have written about that sit close to this one, by reading level and by subject.
Earthquakes with Max Axiom: The Claim Without the Working
The Earth-Shaking Facts about Earthquakes with Max Axiom, Super Scientist by Katherine Krohn
Grade 4 to 8
Volcanoes with Max Axiom: Buy It for the Cutaway
The Explosive World of Volcanoes with Max Axiom, Super Scientist by Christopher L Harbo
Grade 4 to 8
Julie of the Wolves: The Science and the Caution
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
Grade 4 to 7
The Tornado Scientist: The Day That Ends in Nothing
The Tornado Scientist: Seeing Inside Severe Storms 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.
