Eighth Grade

• General / Multiple Sciences
• Expedition / Survival

Why it works: In the Field with National Geographic tells the organization's 135-year story through the explorers, scientists, educators, photographers, and innovations that carried questions from Everest to microscopes, deep seas, and space. The changing people and tools make multidisciplinary discovery an expedition history rather than an encyclopedia of subjects.

• Earth Science
• Life Science
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Dinosaurs follows a century and a half of fossil hunters as discoveries repeatedly change the dinosaurs people draw and describe. The history becomes an evidence mystery in which feathers, bones, field finds, and competing interpretations revise the scientific picture.

• Life Science
• Environment & Ecology
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Sharks dives from hammerheads and great whites to nurse sharks and the extinct megalodon while challenging the monster image people give them. Four hundred million years of adaptations, varied habitats, and predator roles turn fear into a visual investigation of shark diversity and ecological importance.

• Engineering & Technology
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Robots and Drones gives Pouli, an early mechanical bird, a funny journey from tea-serving automata to factory robots, flying drones, and Mars rovers. His travels reveal how robots sense, follow instructions, move, and change when people design them for different jobs.

• Astronomy & Space
• Engineering & Technology
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Human Spaceflight turns the race between the United States and Soviet Union into a visual history that moves from first orbit and Moon landing to international work in an orbital laboratory. Rockets, orbital speed, microgravity, and daily-life design problems explain both the rivalry's milestones and the later cooperation.

• Life Science
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Dogs sends a friendly mutt after his lost ball while he investigates dogs' wolf ancestry, breed differences, and intelligence. His personal quest gives genetics, evolution, and behavior a comic character arc from predator origins to human companion.

• Astronomy & Space
• Earth Science
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Solar System sends Sara, Jill, and their space-faring pets on a quest past Venus, Saturn, the Sun, and other neighbors. Acid clouds, icy rings, giant storms, and the solar system's dusty origin turn each stop into a distinct planetary environment rather than a decorative backdrop.

• Life Science
• Environment & Ecology
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Cats ranges from the tiny kodkod to the tiger and neighborhood cat to investigate what the feline family shares. Teeth, claws, camouflage, habitat, and domestication carry the visual journey from wild predator to human companion.

• Life Science
• Environment & Ecology
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Deep-Sea Creatures descends among giant isopods, colossal squid, lampreys, and anglerfish as if readers were exploring the abyss beside them. Each dramatic creature makes sense only through the linked constraints of darkness, scarce food, and crushing water pressure.

• Life Science
• Earth Science
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Prehistoric Mammals travels from dinosaur-era survivors into jungles, oceans, deserts, and the Ice Age to ask how mammals spread into so many roles. Climate shifts and changing habitats drive the appearance of hooves, claws, tusks, large brains, and blowholes across the visual history.

• Life Science
• Biography / Memoir

Why it works: Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northers remembers Cookie's final litter growing into a working sled-dog team within Gary Paulsen's own outdoor life. The pups' play, learning, coordination, and changing abilities make canine development part of a true relationship-and-adventure narrative.